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How Popular is Pokemon?

G

Groudon

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I have always wondered how poplar Pokemon really is. It may be the 2nd best selling video franchise but, the fans are not always that conspicuous. It seems they are all hiding and only revealing themselves on Pokemon Forums and communities. So, how many fans are there really?
 
I think it depends of the country. I can tell only for myself, as I live both in Slovakia and Czech republic and we had dubbed only the original series (and later some TV-station broadcasted DP with an awful dub. But almost noone was watching that, because skip one generation and it feels weird).

So most people know only first (two) generations, know only the series, which they labelled as childhood memory. They barely know that games (or other media) exist. So there are just a bunch people I know from internet they´re still into this and then some people, who know because I told them (and dragged them into series/games).

Honestly, for those reasons I also barely knew anything after gen II until last year and got into this again (and I think much more I did as a child).

So for this countries and my experience, it is popular just as a childhood memory (because everyone here knows at least Pikachu and the first starters, even when they don´t remember their names anymore). But as overall, almost nobody cares.

I wish there were a solid fanbase in the region.
 
The Game is super popular !
However , The Anime's popularity hit rock bottom.
If writer keep doing what the done in BW then one day the Anime will start to get 0.00% TV rating .
 
Are you sure it's really the second best-selling video game franchise? I find that hard to believe...

Pokémon is not nearly as popular as it was back in 2000. My guess is that the sales are coming from old Pokémon fans who continue to buy / play the games despite not being as in to the series as they once were, or perhaps by gamers in general who are not necessarily "Pokémon fans" but buy / play the games anyway.
 
Xenidal said:
Are you sure it's really the second best-selling video game franchise? I find that hard to believe...
Click to expand...

It's the second best-selling Nintendo franchise, after the Mario games. Overall, I don't know how it ranks.

Pokémon will probably never again be as popular as it was in the late '90s, but it obviously still sells well or they wouldn't keep making new games and products. I still see kids and teenagers playing the video games in public, so it's not like they keep it to themselves.
 
Pokemon is the second best selling game franchise overall.

Link

Popularity just depends on where you are and who you are around, but that applies to anything considered popular.
 
Pokemon fans hide away on pokemon forums ?? ok. Is there somewhere else we must go to announce ourselfs ? i am completly unaware of this.

How popular is pokemon ?

Im gonna go with "very" popular

So, how many fans are there really?[/QUOTE]

Do you exect anyone here to know that mate ? im gonna guess alot.
 
I've heard that they sold over 1 million copies since x and y came out.
 
It's probably got a lot to do with pokémon being a game that can still be played casually. What with professional gaming getting steadily more full of itself with each passing year, it's not surprising that outside of pokémon fan communities the franchise tends to only ever be mentioned as a nostalgic reference
 
At our Uni we have 100 members of Poke Soc, but you only ever get around 20 people who actually show up in public.
The game is a lot more acceptable than the anime, though I do know a few fans of the anime in hiding as well.

It's a bit like being LGBT in the decades gone by I guess, no one wants to be outed as a Pokemon fan though many secretly are.

My favourite is people try to play down how much they are fans.
Know one guy first time we talked about Pokemon he told me he hadn't played it since Emerald, he kept on drinking and his lips were getting looser, suddenly he was able to talk about most of the gen 4 and gen 5 Pokemon despite apparently never playing these games, and was able to talk strategy and use specialist terms like Special Sweeper and Wall and talk about IVs and evs etc which even I as a lifelong fan dont really understand.
 
It's pretty damn popular. You just have to look at game sales.
 
Moving away from statistics and just going off personal experience its kinda popular. Its extremely popular and certain groups and in others its just "that old cartoon I used to watch a long time ago."
 
I think the franchise has seen a small boom in popularity since around HG/SS was released among 20-somethings who quit the franchise when its initial popularity waned. I've met a lot of people who only had nostalgic memories of R/B/Y come to adore the later generations; it's an awesome thing to see. :)
 
I agree with OP in that the fans tend to hide. I know a couple of fans of Pokemon who used to be my friends, but other than that, I haven't met any; especially recently. That, or the fans are getting younger and younger, which would make sense.
 
I think Pokemon is very popular to the point that it recognizable by many people of different ages.
It's not often that a video game becomes part of the pop culture that has been part of two generations. The 90s kids/teens and even the current kids.
It happened on me twice when kids would recognize my Pokemon shirts.
One shirt I had was a very obvious Pikachu's face, and kids in the city giggled and yell Pikachu at me.
One time, I wore a shirt where Pikachu is facing back so you can only see his tail and back. I went to school and there's this kid of I would say 6 or 7 (he was in the day care program of our college)
and pointed at my shirt then yelled Pikachu.

My point is, Pokemon's legacy has continued to live on to different generation of kids. If you look back at huge video games in the 90s like Megaman, Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc.
None of them has the same impact as Pokemon to kids. And that to me is how insanely high Pokemon's popularity is. It has grew in to something more than just a video game. It's a pop culture.
 
I don't have any statistics, so I can only tell you as a fan who lived through it. I remember toys, games and anything that could have had the name slapped on it. It was a phenomenon. I remember going to school, hearing kids talking about it, especially the TCG. I remember during lunch, we'd play it, trade cards and just talk Pokémon. It was a wonderful time.

However, nowadays, I don't really see much Pokémon merchandise, save for the games.
 
It's pretty popular, despite most people (where I live, even my parents!) just seeing it as a childish anime. It is perhaps my most embarrassing secret in real life (except for the fact that my goshdarn little brother had to pretty much scream all around school, but that's a story for another day)
 
It seems to be relatively popular where I live. When X and Y were released, a lot of my co-workers were bringing their 3DS to work, level grinding their teams. Of course, we have a dedicated group of nerds at my workplace so nobody's ashamed that they're caught playing Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, etc. (Hey, I collect Transformers and have a crush on Bumblebee. If I were to be ashamed of what I like, I'd never be able to leave my house!)
 
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