Next year, Pokemon will celebrate its 30th anniversary, but The Pokemon Company didn’t wait to find a reason to celebrate now. In the 29 years since the franchise’s debut, almost 500 million copies of Pokemon video games have been sold.
According to The Pokemon Company, the sales total across all platforms is 489 million through the end of March 2025. No further breakdown was included that displayed which Pokemon titles sold the most, but it did include a notice that the games are available in nine languages.
When it comes to the trading card game, Pokemon’s success is even more impressive. 75 billion Pokemon cards have been sold since 1996. There’s no way the Pokemon video game sales can match that number any time soon. But the title most likely to carry the games over 500 million is Pokemon Legends Z-A, which recently unveiled a few of its starter Pokeman ahead of its launch on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 later this year.
Pokemon has become so pervasive in our culture that we’re barely surprised anymore when someone gets arrested with a stolen Pokemon card worth over $300,000. In this week alone, it was announced that all 140 Episodes of Pokemon the Series: XY are coming to Netflix next month. In other Pokemon-related news, Pokemon TCG Pocket’s next expansion launches on May 29.
