Sunday, April 30, 2006

Who knew Pikachu was so big?


We were looking through photos from last summer and I came across this lovely image. It was one of those photo opportunities I couldn't resist. I'm rather curious what percentage of revenue comes from the games and what percentage come from the merchandizing offshoots.

For a good overview of the Pokemon brand management and product introduction issues, I highly recommend this case study:
http://w3.salemstate.edu/~poehlkers/Emerson/Pokemon.html

take care
Danc.
Posted by Daniel Cook at 10:51 PM
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15 comments:

  1. I'd love to have some real info but my understanding is unless you make the toys yourself and sell them yourself you get very little revenue.

    What I mean is, if Nintendo makes Pokemon and licenses the characters to say Hasbro for figures, Hasbro might make a bundle but Nintendo gets very little. Of course maybe in Pokemon's case because it is such a big franchise they've been able to re-negociate but I suspect at the beginning they got very very little.

    Instead they get cross advertising effects which increases game sales. For a $35 game, being a first party (no license fee for the carts) they probably make $15 a unit where as for a $5 figure they probably get like $0.10 or less.

    That's just my guess based on looking into toys for my own game. I'd like real info as well although again, not just Pokemon since it at this point it's bound to be an exception rather than the rule.
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  2. I had never realized Pikachu was so large. He looked so much smaller on the monochrome GB screen. Now it's obvious that Pokemon is intended to be Swiftian satire.
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  3. Pokemon US licensing nets 1.3 Billion in its 9th year. This is licensing alone and doesn't seem to include games.

    From previous articles, we see that in 1999, worldwide sales were $7 billion with US sales of $1.2 billion. I haven't found anything about current worldwide sales, but it appears at least in the US that Pokemon sales have increased over the last 6 years, not declined. It's no Sanrio, but still quite impressive.

    One of the things that prompted me to post this was my recent excursion into Target where I was surprised by all the Pokemon toys. This is a brand that will continue to make a major impact on the market for many years to come. It should also be noted that Nintendo is no Coleco. :-)

    take care
    Danc.
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  4. Added a case study that describes the Pokemon product launch in much more details.
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  5. Unless I'm mis-understanding Nintendo is not getting $1.2 billion in licensing fees. That number is the gross revenue from licensed prodcuts. How much Nintendo gets of that is not specifed.
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  6. Let me make it clear. Nintendo might be making way wa more money on licensing than games for Pokemon. My point is there are zero if any rules you can pull out from that example. The odds of some new game reaching the popularity of Pokemon are next to zero. Pokemon with all it's games, cartoons, etc is a license that various toy companies will have a bidding war for where as say Metal Gear Solid or FarCry or Half-Life would most likely still have to beg a toy company to use their license. (or any other manufacture that might use licensed characters)
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  7. I posted a little bit about the Pokemon study on my blog at: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=149

    Some discussion on how to translate a work from one medium to another, such as Pokemon's translation from video game to all the other media (trading card game, stuff toys, etc.) and how that worked for Nintendo's benefit. I hopefully added a bit of insight into on why it worked so well in this case.
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  9. Yep. Danc = Redhead. Did you know that we have an odd resistance to anesthesia? It's true. The Secrets of Redheads
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  10. more like, "Who knew Danc was so small?!"
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  11. Man oh man, I wish I had a giant Pikachu like that in my bedroom, or better yet, in my hard, like a garden gnome, only big and yellow and Pikalicious!

    I'll admit it, I love Pokemon, even if it is nearly 10 years old.

    I nearly bought a Gamecube to get ahold of their Poke'mon games. Whenever a new gameboy game comes out, I can pretty much check out for two weeks... in pure gaming
    nirvana.

    Pokemon is a great game franchise. One of my faves still is Pokemon Pinball... which, if you like pinball, you'll want to check out, cuz the pokemon part just adds to the fun of it.

    Anyhow, it's all a blast.

    --Ray

    PS. Danc, you're looking great. So when's the wedding? Ain't it getting close? Email me. You have to see our place, while the rhotodendrons are all in bloom... (and before you're sick of them... :)
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  12. oops. unfortunate typo in first sentence... hard -> yard... Ahem...

    --Ray
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  13. Are you at E3? I was looking forward to reading your impressions of the hte games, the atmosphere and the hype. Give us something
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  14. I'm not at e3 this year, but I've been following the various announcements avidly. I'll see if I can whip up a post with my thoughts.

    take care
    Danc.
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  15. Nothing to say about games but I love your Pikachu picture.
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