“Gotta catch ‘em all” has been a mantra of video game players for 20 years. Nintendo has sold more than 277 million Pokémon video games since the debut of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green in 1996 for the Game Boy system in Japan.
And in celebration of that 20th anniversary, The Pokémon Company is releasing a pair of brand new Nintendo 3DS video games this fall. Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will ship just in time for Christmas.
This announcement was made today during the Pokémon Direct livestreamed presentation by Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokémon Company. Not much about the new games from developer Game Freak have been revealed, but current gamers will be able to continue adding to their virtual collections through a new share feature. Using Pokémon Bank, gamers will be able to transfer Pokémon they’ve caught in other Pokémon games into their copies of Pokémon Sun or Pokémon Moon.
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Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will be the first games in the Pokémon series to allow players to choose from nine languages to play in. In addition to English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, players will now be able to play in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
Also new for gamers is Pokkén Tournament for Wii U, an arcade fighting game uses the Tekken fighting game engine, which Nintendo ships March 18.
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Niantic, the former Google division, is developing Pokémon GO, a mobile augmented reality game that will send gamers to real locations to capture virtual Pokémon. Nintendo (NTDOY) is developing a Pokémon GO Plus smartband gamers can use for the smartphone game. Developer Game Freak is also involved in this mobile title.
Outside of games, The Pokémon Company has sold over 21.5 billion cards worldwide in 74 countries across 11 languages. And they’ve licensed Pokémon to 170 companies, resulting in over 5,000 products—including new offerings from Tomy such as 20th Anniversary Mythical Pokémon figures.
According to The Pokémon Company, the total worldwide market size of the franchise is $404,216,695 with 46% coming from Japan and 54% coming from the rest of the world.