What this is
Whether new Pokémon console games show up in The Pokémon Company’s Tokyo accounts, years to February 2022–2026: no visible game-year pattern before Pocket.
How it’s built
- Take gross margin and revenue growth for each year from the Tokyo company’s published results.
- Mark each year as a new-game year or not, by release date.
- Gross margin rose 1.4–1.7 points a year in game and non-game years alike, then fell 8.5 points in the year Pocket launched.
What we assumed
- Each game belongs to the year in which it was released, mapped to The Pokémon Company’s March–February year.Sales concentrate around launch, so this is reasonable, though late-February launches would straddle years.
- Release dates are as listed, mostly from Wikipedia.Several release rows were checked only once and some come from Wikipedia, so small errors are possible.
- New Pokémon Snap was sold by The Pokémon Company in Japan.Supported by credits on similar spin-offs, but stated conditionally in the research.
Sanity check
The year without a main game (to February 2024) grew faster, 26.9%, than the game year before it, 14.8%. With no segment data, a single revenue line can easily hide a game effect behind the card boom.
Where it comes from
Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:
- FiledThe Pokémon Company Tokyo company’s cost ratios for the years to February 2021–2026
- EstimateThe Pokémon Company’s Tokyo company revenue growth in years with and without a new console game, 2021 to 2026. New-game years averaged 38% growth; other years 33%
- ReportedWhich main-series Pokémon game launched in each of Nintendo’s financial years (April to March), 2016 to 2026, including years with only add-on content or nothing
Show the working
- ΔGM: 48.01−46.53=1.48
- 49.74−48.01=1.73
- 51.16−49.74=1.42
- 42.68−51.16=−8.48
- 43.27−42.68=0.59