As we race toward the end of the financial year, reports have started popping up showing the good, the bad, and the ugly of game companies’ revenues. Recently, mobile game developer DeNA released its Q3 report, where revenue is a huge 15.5 billion yen – that’s $98 million. A fun number for you here – the company’s current profit is up a humongous 8126.8%.
You can see the nitty gritty information here, and while there’s still Q4 to go, we’re sure that the numbers will only go up and up. Unsurprisingly, this is all down to Pokémon TCG Pocket’s wild success. Not that we expected a free Pokémon game to do badly, but it revitalized the trading card game and got many more new players on board.
Having only a handful of Pokémon TCG Pocket decks available at launch didn’t stop anyone, as the app has over 60 million downloads already. Over at Pocket Tactics we’ve all tried it out and had our butts handed to us in the online battles.
This isn’t the first time DeNA produced a Nintendo mobile game, though. Back in 2016, the company worked with Nintendo on Miitomo and Super Mario Run, then Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp in 2017, and Mario Kart Tour in 2019. Outside of that, the company has Arena of Valor under its belt, too.
DeNA, unfortunately, didn’t have the best 2024 – the company reported losses in 2023’s fiscal year due to “operations being centered on existing titles and the ongoing major downsizing of the China business”. Thankfully, Pokémon TCG Pocket’s release in October changed this all and likely saved DeNA from an early grave.
The latest Pokémon game may be one of our favorite new mobile games, but we’re waiting for more of our favorite starter Pokémon and legendary Pokémon to make their way to the game’s roster.