Nintendo earns from Pokémon twice and is paid in cash once. Its share of its affiliates’ profit, nearly all of it The Pokémon Company’s, was ¥82.8bn last year and ¥60.8bn in the six months to September 2026 alone, 20.2% of its ordinary profit. Almost none of it arrives as money: over ten years Nintendo has received an estimated ¥3.3–3.8bn in dividends from TPC. Nintendo’s Pokémon cash comes from selling the games; the stake is a fast-growing claim on a company that keeps what it earns.
What Nintendo kept
Pokémon reached the West as a Nintendo product. Nintendo of America filed the US trademark in 1997, and 4Kids licensed the merchandise as Nintendo’s agent outside Asia. From 1998 Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak handed the running of Pokémon to The Pokémon Company, which took the cards and the licensing back over the next decade (see The Pokémon Company).
Nintendo kept three things. The first is a stake: 32% of TPC’s votes, and one officer on its board. The second is the games: Nintendo publishes and sells the core games overseas, while in Japan TPC is the publisher of record and Nintendo the seller (see Video games). The third is part of the name: Nintendo of America holds the US and Canadian Pokémon trademarks; in Japan the core marks are registered jointly by the three founders (see Brand). TPC also buys Nintendo’s products and contracts manufacturing to it.
The games are also Nintendo’s hardware lever. Legends: Z-A has sold 13.31m, 4.04m of them as the Switch 2 Edition, and Pokopia 4.04m outside Japan, where TPC sells it itself.
A paper profit that has taken off
Under equity accounting Nintendo books its share of its affiliates’ profit each year, whether or not any is paid out. The perimeter matters. The line covers all its equity-method affiliates: chiefly TPC, but also the operator of the Seattle Mariners, whose result is within about two per cent either way of the affiliates’ total. And last year’s figure carries between ¥11.7bn and ¥17.0bn of one-offs, TPC’s gains from the sale of Niantic’s games business among them.
Before Pokémon GO the line was ¥1.9bn a year. GO lifted it to ¥20.3bn; the card boom and Pocket took it to ¥35.1bn and then ¥82.8bn. The first half of this year was up 37.7% on the same half last year.
Nintendo’s Pokémon-led affiliate income more than doubled last year; this year’s first half already reached three-quarters of it
Nintendo’s share of its affiliates’ profit (equity-method income), ¥ billion. Full years to March; the last bar is April–September 2026 only.
- Full year to March
- First half of the year to March 2027 (six months only)
The GO spike faded within a year. The card boom lifted the line from 2022 and it has held there since; last year it more than doubled, one-offs included. Six months of the new year have already booked ¥60.8bn.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year to March (last bar: a half year) | Full year to March, ¥bn | First half of the year to March 2027 (six months only), ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | – | ||
| 2018 | – | ||
| 2019 | – | ||
| 2020 | – | ||
| 2021 | – | ||
| 2022 | – | ||
| 2023 | – | ||
| 2024 | – | ||
| 2025 | – | ||
| 2026 | – | ||
| Apr–Sep 2026 | – |
Full year to March. Nintendo’s share of its affiliates’ profit (equity-method income), as printed. Nearly all of it is The Pokémon Company’s (Nintendo holds 32%); the line also takes in the Mariners’ operator, and the year to March 2026 carries ¥11.7–17.0bn of one-offs.
First half of the year to March 2027 (six months only). Six months, April–September 2026: ¥60.8bn against ¥44.2bn a year earlier (+37.7%), already 73% of the whole of the previous year.
The line is now big enough to move Nintendo’s results. It was 15.3% of ordinary profit last year and 20.2% in the first half. Nintendo names no driver beyond higher equity income and interest. What drove TPC’s half, and whether the 30th-anniversary year flatters it, is on The Pokémon Company.
Booked, not received
Over the ten years to March 2026 Nintendo booked ¥253bn as its share of affiliate profit, nearly all of it TPC’s. TPC’s Tokyo parent paid out twice in that time (the payout record is on The Pokémon Company), and Nintendo’s share of those payouts came to an estimated ¥3.3–3.8bn. The rest stays inside TPC, profit Nintendo owns a share of but has never taken out.
Nintendo booked ¥253bn of affiliate profit in ten years and took a few billion in cash
Ten years to March 2026, ¥ billion. The booked figure covers all Nintendo’s equity-method affiliates, nearly all TPC; the cash figure is an estimate.
- Share of affiliate profit booked
- Cash received (estimate)
The paper side is Nintendo’s accounting share of affiliate profit. The cash side is what TPC actually paid it.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Ten years to March 2026 | Share of affiliate profit booked, ¥bn | Cash received (estimate), ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of affiliate profit booked (mostly TPC) | – | ||
| Cash received from TPC (estimate) | – | (3.3–3.8) |
Share of affiliate profit booked. Nintendo’s equity-method income, years to March 2017–2026, summed. It covers all its equity-method affiliates (TPC, the Mariners’ operator and, in early years, others) and includes the year to March 2026’s one-offs; TPC is nearly all of it.
Cash received (estimate). Estimate: the low end from Nintendo’s own accounts, the high end its 32% of the TPC parent’s two payouts (years to February 2018 and 2024).
Exchange rates add a second paper gain outside profit: in the four years to March 2025 the weaker yen raised the value of Nintendo’s affiliate stakes by about ¥23 billion through currency translation.
Nintendo has little reason to ask for more. It holds ¥1.8tn of cash of its own. And it already carries a deferred tax liability of ¥55bn for the day its affiliates pay out, so leaving profit inside TPC also defers a tax bill. That provision rose from ¥38.2bn a year earlier.
The tax that waiting defers
Tax Nintendo has set aside on its affiliates’ retained profits, against what a full payout by TPC’s Tokyo parent would cost it, ¥ billion.
- Set aside (filed)
- If the parent paid out all ¥414bn (estimate)
- Same, if the whole ¥55bn line is TPC’s (estimate)
The provision covers all of Nintendo’s affiliates. On our estimate, a full payout by TPC’s Tokyo parent would use up roughly half of it.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Nintendo, March 2026 | Set aside (filed), ¥bn | If the parent paid out all ¥414bn (estimate), ¥bn | Same, if the whole ¥55bn line is TPC’s (estimate), ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tax set aside on affiliates’ retained profits | – | – | ||
| Tax on a full payout, statutory rule | – | – | ||
| Tax on a full payout, if the ¥55bn is all TPC’s | – | – | (26.8–31.8) |
Set aside (filed). Nintendo’s deferred tax line covers all its affiliates, not only The Pokémon Company; the filing does not split it.
If the parent paid out all ¥414bn (estimate). On the parent’s ¥413.9bn of retained earnings paid to Nintendo at 32%. Statutory rule: below one-third ownership, half of a dividend is exempt. Retention defers the tax rather than avoiding it.
The cash is in the games
Nintendo’s Pokémon cash comes from selling the games, and that line is lumpy. On our estimate its overseas Pokémon game revenue was ≈¥81bn last year, a launch year for Legends: Z-A. Launch-year peaks have fallen, from ¥109–145bn in the year to March 2022 to ¥69–93bn last year, partly because 2022 had two titles. In years without a mainline game the line falls to a fraction of that. Pokémon games were about 12% of Nintendo’s sales in the GO year and about 4.5% last year.
That is revenue, not profit, and at list prices. Whether the games still earn Nintendo more than the stake books depends on development costs, retail margins and what Nintendo pays TPC, none of which are published.
On that last item, Nintendo’s own filings point towards nothing. In eleven annual reports to March 2026 its list of material contracts is empty, its related-party note has no row for TPC, and the one dealing it describes runs the other way: TPC buys Nintendo’s products and has Nintendo manufacture for it. Nintendo describes TPC as a customer and a manufacturing client, not as a licensor. That is not proof of zero: the related-party note only has to show dealings above about ¥195bn, far more than any royalty modelled. So the trainer’s notes now carries any royalty on Nintendo’s overseas Pokémon sales as a band of ¥0–28bn for the year to March 2026, with no central figure. If it is zero, the 1998 split is simple: Japanese publishing to TPC, overseas game sales to Nintendo, and TPC’s earnings lean even harder on cards and licensing than its games line suggests. What can be said is that the two lines now move differently: the games rise and fall with each release, and the stake follows the cards and TPC’s other products, which Nintendo shares in only through its stake.
What it adds up to
Nintendo gave the running of Pokémon to TPC and kept the votes, the games and the name abroad. The franchise has since grown fastest where Nintendo does not sell: cards and TCG Pocket are TPC’s products. So more and more of what Nintendo earns from Pokémon is an accounting share that stays inside TPC, while its cash rides the release calendar.