The world is selling 90 billion dollars. How can Pikachu become the first IP？

Text | Jiang Yuqi

Editor | Shi Yedong

Who is the number one IP in the world?

If it comes to the influence of film works, the phenomenal IP "reconnection" in recent years may be well deserved; If you compare the loyalty and madness of fans, then "Star Wars" may be difficult to find opponents; However, if "gold-absorbing ability" is taken as the judging standard, Pokémon (officially translated as Pokémon, also translated as Pokemon, Petelf and Poké mon) led by Pikachu really deserves it.　

Pokémon’s first live-action film Pokémon Detective Pikachu

ID: Youhaoxifilm found in Wikipedia’s "List of Highest-Grossing Media Franchises" (hereinafter referred to as the "list") that in the past twenty years, the copyright owners of Pokémon’s products have made accumulated profits of more than 90 billion US dollars through product sales and derivative licenses, ranking first in the IP category of major film and television animation games. This figure is higher than Disney’s Mickey Mouse ($70 billion) and Star Wars ($65 billion), and more than three times that of Marvel Comics movies ($28 billion).

Statistics as of March 2019, unit: USD.

Today, Pokémon’s derivative film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, which is also the first live-action version of the IP, officially landed in the mainland cinema. As of poison eye’s press release, the film’s arrangement ratio has reached 38% today. In the past few days, the WeChat index of Pikachu has also increased by more than 30% every day, and it has surpassed The Avengers on the 8th. In order to create momentum for the film, the film even invited two business leaders, Wang Jianlin and Ma Huateng, to give the "Pikaqiu" platform, which can be described as quite a row.

How can a small Pikachu have such great market value and influence?

The birth of "the first IP": how "Pikachu" became popular all over the world

In 1989, Nintendo, a Japanese company, one of the three largest video game giants in the world, launched the epoch-making product GameBoy (hereinafter referred to as GB). Driven by the famous game Tetris, GB gained wide acclaim as soon as it came out, among which Tetris alone won tens of millions of sales within two months after its launch.

At the same time, Tian Kaozhi, a "game enthusiast", set up a game development club, GameFreak, trying to make some action games. In Tian Kaozhi’s view, the most distinctive feature of GB is not the lightness and thinness of the company’s main promotion, but its "wired communication function", which reminds him of catching insects and interacting with insects with friends as a child, and thus the idea of developing a game of cultivating and exchanging "insects" came into being-Pokemon took shape.

Tian Kaozhi, founder of GameFreak

As it happens, in 1994, due to the appearance of 32 hosts such as 3DO, SS and PS, the sales volume of GB, which is not dominant in capacity and image quality, began to decline. The annual sales volume in Japan plummeted from more than 3 million to 1.81 million, and the sales volume of software also dropped from nearly 18 million to 10.3 million. In order to get rid of the crisis, Nintendo began to focus on finding new selling points of GB, and Pokemon, which was developed by GameFreak and emphasized the brand-new concept of communication warfare, received attention.

In 1996, the first generation Pokemon games, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green, were officially launched. Unfortunately, at that time, GB was no longer the most popular handheld device on the market, so Pokemon didn’t make much waves in the early days, and only sold 200,000 copies in one month.

However, at the same time that the first generation of Pokemon was launched, a comic book called Pippi Biography based on the characters in the game began to be serialized. In this cartoon, Pikachu only appeared as a supporting role, and the real protagonist was another Pockmarked Pippi, and the painting style and storyline were also quite meaningless, which was very different from the series of works known to the public later, but it was welcomed by many readers at that time.　

When Nintendo saw this, it started marketing with the biography of Pippi as the position. For example, readers who bought the biography of Pippi had the opportunity to participate in related activities and win the limited edition dream of Baokemeng. Because the number of "dreams" is only 100, relying on hunger marketing and the high popularity of Pippi Biography, it instantly attracted a large number of users to participate, which suddenly boosted the popularity of Pokemon.　

By March 1997, Pokemon had jumped to the TOP30 of Japanese software sales list. With the participation of more users, the interactive and battle functions of Pokemon have also been displayed, and the game experience has been greatly increased. In the following two years, Nintendo revised the game and launched Pokemon Blue and other versions. The sales of the first generation of Pokemon also increased year by year, and eventually sold 45 million sets, becoming one of the most popular games in Nintendo’s history, and successfully revitalizing the company’s business.

Nintendo, who wants to pursue victory, constantly updates its handheld devices, and successively introduces new products such as GameBoy Color(GBC) and GameBoy Advance(GBA) with better picture quality and lighter weight, and at the same time continues to launch new Pokemon games in conjunction with GameFreak. After 1999, Pokemon series successively launched Poké mon Gold and Silver, including seven generations (the eighth generation was released this winter) of handheld games and a large number of derivative games and console games, which reached more than 70 models, sold more than 300 million sets worldwide, and won eight related world records issued by Guinness World Records, laying the foundation for the worldwide popularity of this IP.

However, due to the limited ability to develop and update early Game Freak games, Nintendo, who was worried about the decline of Pokemon, found the primary school of Japan’s largest publishing group and worked together to create derivative cartoons and animations of the IP to gain time for game development. In 1997, while Pokemon became more and more popular, the first Pokémon animation was officially launched. In this series, Pikachu, who has a high popularity in the game, replaced Pippi as the protagonist and suddenly became the spokesperson of Pokémon, an IP.

"Pokémon" animated poster

Facts have proved that the animation of Pokémon is an extremely correct choice. Compared with games with a certain threshold (requiring equipment), with the help of TV and the rising Internet, animation has become a better communication carrier for Pokémon.

During the first generation of Pokémon (1997-2002) broadcast in Japan, the average audience rating reached more than 10% (the average audience rating exceeded 15% in some late Shi Ying League), and almost every episode ranked in the top ten in the same period; The theme song of the animation "The Goal is the Master of Pockmarked Dreams" also captured 1.85 million album sales in Japan; Up to now, 80% of the more than 1,000 episodes of Pokémon in six seasons are ranked in the top ten in the same period.

While the influence of Pokémon is gradually increasing in Japan, IP operators are constantly pushing it to the world. In the United States, companies such as Pokémon and Disney have had in-depth cooperation. In 2000 alone, more than 25 million animated DVDs and VCD； were sold. Statistics from India show that this series was once the animation with the largest number of users among audiences aged 4-14. Up to now, Pokémon has been broadcast in 124 countries. Even in 2016, Netflix revealed that Pokémon is one of the most popular series on Netflix.

The best-selling DVD of Pokémon.

With the popularity of Pokémon and the expansion of Pokemon’s global influence, Poké mon has gradually occupied an increasingly important position in the hearts of users all over the world. In 1999, Pokémon appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and Pikachu was named the second most influential person of the year by Time magazine, calling him "the most popular animated character after Hello Kitty".

In recent years, Pokémon’s influence has a tendency to surpass the pure entertainment field and gradually become a cultural symbol. In the United States, during the election, Hillary Clinton and other politicians even went to the gathering of American Pokémon fans to canvass this huge audience. In Japan, Pikachu is regarded as a "national symbol". When Japan played in the World Cup in 2014, Pikachu defeated Doraemon, etc., and joined hands with more than ten other Pockmarked Dreams to become the mascot of the Japanese team.

　How do Pikachu earn 90 billion dollars?

Such a large global influence naturally makes the market value of Pokémon IP rise.

As early as 1998, Nintendo and Game Freak jointly established The Pokémon Company for brand licensing and derivative product development, and successively set up subsidiaries in the United States and South Korea for different markets. By 2003, the image of Pikachu alone could earn $800 million a year, and it was even selected as "the most profitable virtual character of the year" by Forbes. Today, Pokémon has created a total income of 90 billion dollars for all partners, which is even more difficult for Marvel Comics.

So what did the "Pikachu" rely on to earn this $90 billion? According to the public information, Poison Eye has sorted out the public realization modes of Pokémon on the Internet, and divided them into the following categories: authorization and sale of peripheral derivatives, sales of electronic games, sales of card games, animation and movie income. The specific division is as follows-

The form is from Wikipedia.

1. Authorization and sale of peripheral derivatives

The authorization and sale of peripheral derivatives is one of the most profitable businesses related to Pokémon at present. According to the "list" data, the related income has accumulated to more than 60 billion US dollars in the past two decades. At present, Disney, an entertainment giant in Japan and China and the overlord of derivatives, can earn $45 billion a year from derivatives, but this is the result of the joint efforts of many phenomenal IPS such as Mickey Mouse, Marvel Comics and Star Wars, and Pokémon can sell an average of $23 billion a year, which shows its influence.

In 2004, one year after Pokémon was launched in India, the total sales of related licensed goods exceeded 10 billion rupees, equivalent to 22.1 million US dollars. In Europe, Pokémon-related toys are called "dominant" by the local media. The British Toy Industry Association has awarded the annual toy awards to related products many times. Until 2017, in Britain, Italy and other places, the annual sales of Pokémon toys still increased by more than 50%.

In 2017, Alibaba Pictures and The Pokémon Company reached a strategic cooperation, obtained the development and marketing authorization of Pokémon’s peripheral products in China, and began to promote related products on Tmall and other platforms. According to the data disclosed by Alibaba Pictures, in the first three days of the launch of related products, the transaction volume was nearly 20 million yuan, and the UV was 2.5 times that of the same order of magnitude in daily life, while the daily sales of Pokémon-related derivatives was 30 million yuan.

In 2017, the daily sales volume of Double Eleven Pokémon derivatives reached 30 million yuan.

According to incomplete statistics, there are thousands of genuine Pokémon derivatives around Pikachu at this stage, involving daily necessities, clothing and snacks. In addition to authorized goods, ThePokémon Company has opened more than ten "Baokemeng Centers", nearly 30 "Baokemeng Specialty Stores" and several regional online stores around the world.

2. Video game sales

Video game sales is the oldest and most traditional cash channel of Pokémon, and it is the most popular game IP on almost every Nintendo handheld after GB. Up to now, Pokémon’s various derivative games have sold more than $17 billion and more than 300 million sets worldwide, ranking second in the history of video games in terms of sales volume, second only to Mario produced by Nintendo, and also the best-selling role-playing game in history.

If the handheld computer was one of the thresholds for the maximum popularity of Pokémon games in the past, then the arrival of the mobile game era has solved this problem well. In 2016, Pokémon GO was launched overseas, and accumulated 75 million downloads in half a year. By the end of 2018, Pokémon GO had attracted players to spend as much as 2.2 billion US dollars, including 795 million US dollars in revenue in 2018, up 35% year-on-year. Niantic, its game developer, has also received $200 million in financing and a valuation of $4 billion.

Such a huge income was created when the China market was not fully opened. Although Pokemon has been popular all over the world twenty years ago, mainland players are almost always exposed to pirated and cracked versions. In 2014, even mainland Pokemon fans wrote a petition to Nintendo, hoping to promote genuine Chinese works. Not long ago, Tencent got the agency right of Nintendo’s hottest handheld NS in the mainland, which means that some Pokemon games supporting NS will have the opportunity to gain more space in the mainland in the future.

It is worth mentioning that games are also creating new income possibilities for derivatives and film and television products, and many mature games themselves have gradually formed influential IP, which has the possibility and space for fission. The movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu is a film adapted from the enhanced version of Nintendo’s game The Birth of Detective Pikachu’s New Partner. Thanks to the popularity of this film, the film also opened the "Detective Pikachu Theme Entertainment Exhibition" and a series of pop-up shop in China, which provided a channel for offline consumption of derivatives and continued to increase the income of products around them.

3. Card game sales　

Card game sales are one of the most easily underestimated channels for realizing Pokémon, but in fact, these seemingly insignificant pieces of paper have accumulated more than 10 billion US dollars in revenue. The official name of this card game is "PokémonTrading Card Game" (PTCG), which is an officially authorized card game with the theme of Pokémon.

According to the data disclosed on the official website of Pokémon, as of March 2018, PTCG has sold more than 25.7 billion copies worldwide; According to the statistics of NPD Group, an authoritative survey company in the United States, in 2017, PTCG occupied more than 80% of the market share in the European strategic card market, and the annual sales in many countries in that year increased by more than 400% year-on-year; According to the survey of License Global, as early as 2016, PTCG has surpassed the "Game King" to become the best-selling strategic card game.

Like video games, PTCG has not entered the domestic market due to copyright, policy and market restrictions. However, in Japan, Europe, America and Hong Kong, China, PTCG is promoted by big agents (for example, in North America, the agent of PTCG is the parent company of magic the gathering), and it has a good popularity in the local area, and even has special tournaments. Not only that, in the eyes of many collectors, PTCG also has a very high collection value, and the price of some rare cards can even reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.　

4. Animation and movie revenue

Animation and film revenue mainly includes the copyright income of comics and animation, as well as the box office income of theatrical films, and the global cumulative income has reached billions of dollars. Although this income is almost negligible compared with other incomes, movies and comics, as an important carrier of Pokémon to maintain its popularity and popularity, are still highly valued by Nintendo, elementary school and other interested parties.

In addition to the nearly 1,000 episodes of animation and related cartoons mentioned above, Pokémon has released 1-2 theatrical works every year since 1998. After the first theatrical version of Pokémon: The Counter-attack of Super Dream was released in 1998, it first achieved 7.3 billion yen in Japan (the second in the whole year); Later, when the film was released in North America and other places, it also accumulated more than 160 million US dollars at the box office, setting a box office record for Japanese films in many countries and regions.

Pokémon: The Counter-attack of Super Dream

Counting Pokémon, which will be released in July this year, 23 theatrical versions of Poké mon have been released in the past twenty years, including five in North China and one in mainland (Poké mon: Volcanion and Magearna with a box office of 25 million in 2017). Although the follow-up works failed to continue the glory of the first work, they can still harvest 2-4 billion yen at the local box office every year, ranking among the top 20 in the annual box office list.

The contingency and inevitability behind Pokémon’s popularity.

Thanks to many business lines covering all fields of cultural consumption, the popularity of Pokémon has been growing stronger with the diversification of media forms and entertainment channels since its birth 23 years ago, so that many practitioners talk about Pokémon with admiration and envy. Newell, the boss behind steam, the hottest game platform, has repeatedly lamented the greatness of Pokémon, saying that its developers have made this series better than any other series, and this IP is also the most valuable IP in history, stronger than any product of V Society.

Judging from the development history of Pokémon, there are too many accidental factors that cannot be copied in its success.

The expression of "Big Detective Bikachu" released today is cute.

For example, Pikachu is like this because the designer Nishida Dunzi happened to be raising squirrels at that time. The dream of Pokemon, which helped Pokemon come back to life, was originally a setting to be deleted, but the designer secretly left it behind. Before choosing Pikachu, Nintendo and the Academy actually considered other protagonists, Pippi and another treasure dream Ibu were both taken into consideration … If history is allowed once, any deviation in details may make this IP miss its status today.

But in addition to all these accidents, there are some inevitable factors.

In fact, Nishida Dunzi was not in the design team at first, and the initial design of Pokemon was mainly undertaken by another male designer, Shanshan Jian. Although he also created classic images such as Snorlax, he bluntly said that he always designed images with male thinking, and couldn’t think of any way to create some lovely treasures that female players would also like to participate in the collection. So Shanshan Jian took the initiative to find a female designer, Nishida Dunzi, and created the original Pikachu with the help of the latter. The reason why this "electric squirrel" is called "Pikachu" is also because the name is cute and fits the pronunciation habits of western users.

The earliest Pikachu

The selection of Pikachu as the protagonist of Pokémon is also the result of the team’s consideration in many aspects: First, Pippi in Pippi Biography is too serious to be the protagonist of an all-age animation; Secondly, Pippi’s color is pink, while Pikachu’s is yellow. In the aesthetics of oriental audiences, yellow is more neutral than pink, so it won’t lose male users. In addition, yellow is more recognizable and impactful than other colors, and it is easier to stand out in derivatives.

As for the popularity of Pokémon, it’s not just luck.

Masaichi Kubao, director of the Academy and known as "the father of Pikachu", revealed that Pokémon would do a lot of research before entering any overseas market. "Especially when we push animation to a big market like China, we often look at some works that are very popular in China, or some works that are hot in China but can’t achieve such good results in Japan, and then analyze the reasons. This is the way we use to learn the market differences in different countries. When we brought Pikachu to China, we also did a lot of investigations, including still doing so today. "

It can be seen that although the game of Pokemon and the animation of Pokémon are full of many unknowns in the creative stage, the team is sufficiently forward-looking, and the acceptance, derivative sales and audience characteristics are all included in the planning of the producers, giving them full attention and preparation. And the attention to every little detail has finally made this IP.

On the contrary, before, China derivatives industry practitioners told Poison Eye that one of the important reasons why China film and television derivatives can’t make achievements is that many companies are not forward-looking enough (click here to read: The Wandering Earth derivatives are hot, why didn’t anyone dare to do it before the screening? ), in the creative stage, the elements suitable for derivative development were not selected in advance, and they often waited until the eve of going online to cram for the last minute and make some shoddy products, which further delayed the breakthrough of derivatives in China.

Whether it’s Pokémon, which has remained strong for 20 years, or Marvel Comics, which has accumulated a lot of money and spent ten years building the strongest IP on the screen, these successful IPS are undoubtedly telling the same truth: the success of a good IP was not built in a day. On this road, there are still many places to be cultivated slowly in China’s film and television industry and even the entire entertainment industry.

References:

[1] List of Hester-Grossing Media Franchises Wikipedia

[2] "Tian Kaozhi, the man who created Pokemon" was published by Tailang Gong and Ota Tian Kaozhi in 2004.

(The sales volume and sales data involved in this article are all from Wikipedia statistics unless otherwise specified.)