The Pokemon Company catches huge boost in profits

What would you do if your annual income, after expenses, was 26 times higher this year than last? The Pokémon Company is asking themselves that very question.

According to Dr. Serkan Toto, founder and CEO of Kantan Games, Inc., discussed the released financials of one of the developers behind the smash mobile hit Pokémon Go in a blog post earlier today. Kantan Games, Inc., is a Japan-based consultancy that advises mobile game developers like The Pokémon Company. He listed the net profit of The Pokémon Company’s previous five years, and the results of the mobile hit are astounding. Compared to 2015, where The Pokémon Company had a net profit of only USD $5.6 million, 2016’s net profit is almost 26 times higher at USD $143.4 million.

Pokémon Go took the world by storm last year; it was downloaded more than 50 million times in less than 20 days after release. While the fire has certainly died down, the app still records an active daily user count of around 5 million. Due to the optional microtransactions used in the game, it’s estimated that both developers, Niantic and The Pokémon Company, generated over $1 billion in revenue over the first 6 months of its launch. That’s obviously turned into huge profits for The Pokémon Company, and Niantic (the other mind behind the game) has certainly seen its fair share of profits as well.

Whether or not this revenue stream is tenable remains to be seen. Pokémon Go got its first big update back in February with the addition of 80 new Pokémon from the second generation of games, Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver. There are still over 550 monsters that can be added to the mobile game in future updates; if Niantic and The Pokémon Company can keep interest up, they may be riding this train for a while.

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