Pokémon on phones is two games, and the one The Pokémon Company sells itself is fading on schedule. TCG Pocket averaged 23m monthly players in April–June 2026, against 39 million a year earlier, and its developer DeNA’s game revenue fell 33.2%. On our model that leaves a ¥64–100bn hole in TPC’s revenue for the year to February 2027. Pokémon GO, the other game, is steadier but licensed: its operator books the sales and TPC takes a fee. The question for TPC is whether its next own-sold game, Champions, can refill a channel Pocket opened.
Two games carry the money
Pokémon’s phone portfolio is wide: GO, Pocket, Sleep, UNITE, Champions, Café ReMix and Masters EX. The money is narrow. On our model Pocket alone was 57–70% of TPC’s games income in the year to February 2026, its first full year; GO’s licence fee and the console games make up most of the rest. Two years earlier there was no Pocket at all.
Pocket became most of TPC’s games income in one year
Revenue TPC books from games, by source, ¥ billion, model. Pokémon GO is TPC’s licence income, estimated from the profit it added.
- Console games, low estimate
- Own mobile games, before paying DeNA, low estimate
- Pokémon GO licence income (estimated from profit), low estimate
- Whole games line, low to high estimate
Before Pocket, TPC’s games income was mostly GO’s licence fee and the console games. In the year to February 2026 it was mostly Pocket, a game TPC sells itself.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Year | Console games, low estimate, ¥bn | Own mobile games, before paying DeNA, low estimate, ¥bn | Pokémon GO licence income (estimated from profit), low estimate, ¥bn | Whole games line, low to high estimate, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | – | (32–68) | |||
| 2021 | – | (23–45) | |||
| 2022 | (54–98) | ||||
| 2023 | (48–100) | ||||
| 2024 | (28–52) | ||||
| 2025 | (111–186) | ||||
| 2026 | (142–255) |
Console games, low estimate. What Nintendo pays TPC, from million-seller units. The undocumented console tail is left out.
Own mobile games, before paying DeNA, low estimate. Pocket, Sleep and UNITE, net of app-store fees at the low end. Not sized for 2020–21.
Pokémon GO licence income (estimated from profit), low estimate. A profit-equivalent floor, not licence revenue.
Whole games line, low to high estimate. The pale part is the possible extra up to the high estimate. 2022 is capped at the parent’s gross profit of ¥98bn; the 2021 and 2023 highs are implausible (they need 80% or more of gross profit).
The two big games also differ in deal. GO is built and run by an outside operator, Niantic until 2025 and Scopely since, and TPC is paid as owner of the rights. Pocket, Sleep and Champions TPC sells itself, paying its developers a share. Selling means TPC books the whole sale, and it keeps more: on Pocket, after the app stores and DeNA, about 43–49% of what players spend. It also means TPC’s revenue falls when players leave.
TPC keeps a little under half of every yen spent on Pocket
Estimated split of players’ Pocket spending in the year to February 2026.
- Paid out
- Left for The Pokémon Company
After the app stores and DeNA, TPC keeps a little under half of player spending, before paying Creatures and its own costs.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year | Paid out, yen per ¥100 | Left for The Pokémon Company, yen per ¥100 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Store fees (app stores, assumed rate) | (27.0–33.0) | – | |
| DeNA (its share, from its filings) | (23.6–24.4) | – | |
| Left for The Pokémon Company | – | (42.6–49.4) |
Paid out. Year to February 2026, estimate. The store-fee rate is an assumption; DeNA’s share is calibrated on its October 2024–March 2025 filings. Players spent about ¥143–155bn.
Left for The Pokémon Company. About ¥61–76bn is left after stores and DeNA. Creatures’ development share and TPC’s own costs are not deducted. This is not what TPC books: it records Pocket as revenue and pays DeNA out of it.
Pocket is fading on schedule
Pocket put the oldest moment in the card game, opening a pack, on a phone. It launched in October 2024 and peaked at once. Monthly players, as DeNA reports them, fell from 51m in early 2025 to 23m five quarters later. DeNA put its own fall down to the reaction from Pocket’s high year-earlier level.
Pocket’s monthly players have more than halved
TCG Pocket average monthly players by quarter, millions, as DeNA reports them.
Players fell fastest in the first year; the latest quarter barely moved from the one before.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Quarter | TCG Pocket average monthly players, as DeNA reports them, m players | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jan–Mar 2025 | ||
| Apr–Jun 2025 | ||
| Jul–Sep 2025 | ||
| Oct–Dec 2025 | ||
| Jan–Mar 2026 | ||
| Apr–Jun 2026 |
TCG Pocket average monthly players, as DeNA reports them. DeNA’s quarterly figures. April–June 2026 against April–June 2025: 23m against 39m. The January–March 2026 reading is graded C in the trainer’s notes.
Players are now spending less each, too. On our estimate spending per monthly player fell from about ¥495 a month in early 2025 to ¥239 in April–June 2026. That latest quarter is a single reading, and DeNA did not publish player spending for it, so the estimate is derived. DeNA has already guided its game business to lower revenue and profit for the year to March 2027.
The hole in TPC’s revenue
Because Pocket’s spending counts as TPC’s own sales, the fade lands on TPC’s top line. On our model Pocket brought TPC ¥105–150bn in the year to February 2026, net to gross of app-store fees. If spending decays about 5% a quarter from April–June 2026, the year to February 2027 brings ¥64–100bn less, about 16% of the Tokyo company’s revenue. Whether some of the players Pocket loses move on to paper cards is not measured in anything we have read. TPC says only that some app users become interested in the cards, the page for its 2026 paper-card beginner events does not mention Pocket, and the one number in circulation, that most new players at one collector’s local events started on Pocket, is an anecdote about where newcomers came from, not a conversion rate. Until a measured figure appears, the fade counts here as lost revenue, not as the cost of recruiting card players.
Pocket’s revenue to TPC is on course to more than halve
Pocket’s player spending that reaches TPC, launch period and each year to February, ¥ billion, estimated. Low end after app-store fees, high end before.
The first full year brought TPC over a hundred billion yen. The year to February 2027, on the central decay, brings less than half that.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year | Pocket spending reaching TPC, after to before app-store fees, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2024–Feb 2025 (launch, four months) | ||
| Year to Feb 2026 | ||
| Year to Feb 2027 (estimate) |
Pocket spending reaching TPC, after to before app-store fees. Low end assumes 30% app-store fees, high end is before fees; TPC’s own basis is not published. Built from DeNA’s filed revenue from TPC divided by DeNA’s implied share (0.236). The year to February 2027 assumes spending decays about 5% a quarter from April–June 2026.
None of this has dented Nintendo’s share of TPC’s profit yet (Nintendo): that is the group’s profit, carried by cards in the anniversary year, while Pocket’s fade sits in the Tokyo parent’s revenue.
GO, the licence that lasted
GO is the game that became a habit. Nearly ten years after launch it has more than 20m players a week, and Scopely says it made “more than $1 billion in revenue in 2025 alone”. Its app-store spending in TPC’s latest year was back near the level of the year to February 2018: 0.98–1.13× in dollars and, with the weaker yen, 1.32–1.50× in yen.
GO’s app-store spending fell from its 2020 peak, not to nothing
Pokémon GO’s spending through the Apple and Google app stores, US$ million a year, estimate. Its own web shop is not included.
- App-store spending, estimate
- 2026 projection
- Estimate
App-store spending has fallen from its 2020 peak, but at least a quarter of GO’s spending now goes through its web shop, outside these figures.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year | App-store spending, estimate, US$m | 2026 projection, US$m | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | – | ||
| 2017 | – | ||
| 2018 | (854–902) | – | |
| 2019 | (919–971) | – | |
| 2020 | – | ||
| 2021 | – | ||
| 2022 | – | ||
| 2023 | – | ||
| 2024 | – | ||
| 2025 | (722–733) | – | |
| 2026 | – | (550–750) |
App-store spending, estimate. AppMagic estimates of spending through Apple and Google, calendar years. 2018, 2019 and 2025 are midpoints of implied ranges. GO’s own web shop is not included: at least about a quarter of 2025 player spending went there, so the fall overstates the drop in total spending.
2026 projection. A vendor projection for the full year, drawn as a range.
What TPC takes from that is a fee, worth on our model ¥13–26bn in the latest year. The range is wide because nobody publishes the rate or the base. If the fee is on app-store receipts, at least 27–28% of GO’s 2025 revenue sat outside it, in the web shop.
What replaces Pocket
The candidate TPC sells itself is Champions, a battle game made by PokéWorks, the studio TPC set up with Ilca. It launched on Switch on 8 April 2026 and on phones on 17 June, free to play, with Nintendo selling the Switch version and TPC the phone version. It passed 20m downloads by August, but a vendor puts its first month of phone spending at only about $7.2m. UNITE, the team battle game, stopped selling items in October and closes in March 2027. Sleep has held steady on our model but is small.
The other new success of 2026 is not a phone game. Pokopia, on Switch 2, has sold 4.04m overseas on Nintendo’s table, and TPC sells it itself in Japan. It is a one-off purchase, not a monthly spend, so it cannot replace Pocket’s run rate.