What this is
Who sells Pokémon games to Japanese shops: Nintendo for main-series games, The Pokémon Company itself for a few spin-offs such as Pokopia.
How it’s built
- Read the credit lines on boxes and official sites: Sword/Shield, Scarlet/Violet and Z-A say “published by The Pokémon Company, sold by Nintendo”.
- Read Nintendo’s filings, whose footnote says Pokopia is published and sold in Japan by The Pokémon Company and only overseas by Nintendo.
- Checked Nintendo’s Japanese online store, which lists The Pokémon Company as maker of every Pokémon title.
What we assumed
- The “sold by” credit identifies who books the sale to Japanese retailers.Nintendo’s Japanese unit figures match it: positive for Nintendo-sold titles, blank for titles the company sells itself.
- Payments Nintendo holds in advance from software makers may relate to cartridges made for company-sold titles.Nintendo’s filing says such advances exist; linking them to Pokémon is an inference the research marks as consistent, not proven.
Sanity check
The store’s “maker” field cannot tell the two arrangements apart, so it cannot show who sells digital copies in Japan.
Where it comes from
Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:
- ReportedJapan package credit lines 発売/販売, November 2019 launch
- FiledNintendo as overseas publisher of ぽこ あ ポケモン (Pokopia), year to March 2026
- FiledNintendo own-title table footnote on TPC-sold Japan titles, year to March 2026
- ReportedJapan catalogue 'maker' field on Nintendo's own software search (発売元-equivalent), as of 31 October 2026
- FiledContract liabilities nature (advance payments from software makers), year to March 2026
- ReportedJapan seller of record regimes, 2016-2026
Show the working
- Read across,,,..53, with
Where it’s used
Related figures
Built from this one