The Pokémon Company profits up 2500%
Pokémon Go and Sun/Moon deliver huge growth
The Pokémon Company made $143.3m in its last financial year, says games analyst Serkan Toto.
Unlike Nintendo, The Pokémon Company is not a publicly-owned company, so it doesn't need to release its figures. However, some Japanese businesses release figures to the official Government gazette, which is what has occurred this time.
That $143.3m is a massive rise over the $5.6m made in the previous fiscal year. The huge growth won't come as a surprise, considering the success of Pokémon Go, alongside Pokémon Sun and Moon. There was significant activity around Pokémon last year generally to celebrate the brand's 20th birthday, including re-releases for 3DS of the original titles, the Wii U game Pokken, plus new cards, events, toys and other merchandise.
It's significantly above anything The Pokémon Company has posted for a long time. As a comparison, the firm made $16.6m for the period ending February 28th, 2013 (encompassing the launch of Black & White 2 on DS), $10.6m for the next financial year (which included X and Y) and $18.4m the period after that (which included Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire).
This performance also significantly bolstered Nintendo, which owns 32% of the business (as well as a further 10% of Creatures Inc, which is also a Pokémon Company affiliate).
In other Pokémon-related financial news, Niantic has revealed that real-world locations - like McDonalds - are paying $0.50 per visitor for inclusion in Pokémon Go.
Although that $0.50 figure is flexible - and may be less than that in some cases - TechCrunch (who received the information) estimates that McDonalds in Japan would have been paying around $900,000 a day during the mobile game's peak.
Niantic boss John Hanke had previously said this business model is preferred by the developer, as it means the game's creators can worry less about monetisation.