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Pokémon(an abbreviation for Pocket Monsters in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a company founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996, and is centered on fictional creatures called "Pokémon". In Pokémon, humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train Pokémon to battle other Pokémon for sport. All media works within the franchise are set in the Pokémon universe. The English slogan for the franchise is "Gotta Catch ‘Em All!". There are currently 901 Pokémon species.
The franchise began as Pocket Monsters: Red and Green (later released outside of Japan as Pokémon Red and Blue), a pair of video games for the original Game Boy handheld system that were developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in February 1996. It soon became a media mix franchise adapted into various different media. Pokémon is estimated to be the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. The Pokémon video game series is the fourth best-selling video game franchise of all time with more than 380 million copies sold and one billion mobile downloads. The Pokémon video game series spawned an anime television series that has become the most successful video game adaptation of all time with over 20 seasons and 1,000 episodes in 183 countries. The Pokémon Trading Card Game is the highest-selling trading card game of all time with over 34.1 billion cards sold. In addition, the Pokémon franchise includes the world's top-selling toy brand, an anime film series, a live-action film (Detective Pikachu), books, manga comics, music, merchandise, and a temporary theme park. The franchise is also represented in other Nintendo media, such as the Super Smash Bros. series, where various Pokémon characters are playable.
In 1998, Nintendo spent $25 million promoting Pokémon in the United States in partnership with Hasbro, KFC, and others. Nintendo initially feared that Pokémon was too Japanese for Western tastes but Alfred Kahn, then CEO of 4Kids Entertainment convinced the company otherwise. The one who spotted Pokemon's potential in the United States was Kahn's colleague Thomas Kenney.
In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. The Pokémon Company International oversees all Pokémon licensing outside Asia. In 2006, the franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary. In 2016, the Pokémon Company celebrated Pokémon's 20th anniversary by airing an ad during Super Bowl 50 in January and re-releasing the first Pokémon video games 1996 Game Boy games Pokémon Red, Green (only in Japan), and Blue, and the 1998 Game Boy Color game Pokémon Yellow for the Nintendo 3DS on February 26, 2016. The mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go was released in July 2016. The first live-action film in the franchise, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, based on the 2018 Nintendo 3DS spin-off game Detective Pikachu, was released in 2019. The eighth and current generation of core series games began with Pokémon Sword and Shield, released worldwide on the Nintendo Switch on November 15, 2019.
In celebration of its 25th anniversary in 2021, the core series games, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were released on November 19, 2021, and Pokémon Legends: Arceus will be released on January 28, 2022, both for the Nintendo Switch. They are remakes and a "premake" of the 2006 Nintendo DS games Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, respectively.
