Pokémon, the world's largest media franchise, has had a complex gaming journey. While its mainline games consistently succeed, spinoff titles and adaptations have yielded mixed results.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket's digital evolution particularly illustrates this journey, transforming from a tool supporting physical sales into a mobile platform embracing modern monetization. Beyond Pokémon TCG Pocket's financial success and IP strength, its pivot from gameplay-focused design to social collecting offers valuable insights.

Digital TCG Clients

The Pokémon Company previously centered its efforts on Pokémon TCG Live, a desktop/mobile client launched in summer 2023 to replace Pokémon TCG Online. The company drove physical booster pack sales through redeemable codes, and despite including a battle pass and limited premium currency options, IAPs remained minimal. Less than two years later, both were retired to focus all monetization efforts on the newly released Pokémon TCG Pocket.

When Pokémon TCG Pocket debuted in October 2024, many viewed it as the Pokémon Company's response to Marvel Snap's success. However, Pocket more closely resembles Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, simplifying the original game's rules and reducing match duration rather than introducing novel gameplay mechanics. While these adjustments create shorter matches, games still run longer and feel less dynamic than Marvel Snap. Unlike its predecessors, Pocket was designed to sell IAP, doesn’t support physical pack codes, and directly competes with slightly altered versions of the same cards and gameplay.

Collect ‘Em All

The Pokémon Company knows that fans often care more about collecting than playing the actual game, so the Pocket team leaned into this.

Pocket diverges from typical digital TCGs by freely distributing card packs through simple daily logins rather than requiring match participation, emphasizing collecting as the main attraction.

The game instead monetizes through Pack Hourglasses, a currency that reduces the 12-hour pack timer by one hour per use. Players can purchase timer reductions using the premium currency, Poké Gold, at a rate of one Gold per two hours, while premium pass holders enjoy an additional pack timer for increased daily openings.

The collection-first philosophy manifests in several features: an appealing pack-opening process, sequences that show where new cards slot into a player’s collection, and rewards for collection milestones. Card rarities maintain the challenge of completing sets, reinforcing the "collect 'em all" mentality through positive reinforcement and completion tracking.

Takeaway: Celebrate gains and gaps in collections to keep players motivated.

Themed subsets offering rewards and high-rarity cards further encourage collection behavior. The game also provides limited-use "rental deck" versions with which players can obtain certain deck-defining cards. These are yet more ways to get players excited about collecting all the cards in a grouping and building these predefined decks.

Takeaway: Use lots of collection groupings for medium- to long-term goals, and provide temporary gains to motivate players to obtain them permanently.

Making Collecting Social

Pocket innovates in making collection a social experience through its Wonder Pick system. Through this, players receive rechargeable Wonder Stamina and can view pack results from friends and random players. They can then spend Wonder Stamina to randomly select one card from these packs, sending a "thanks" that rewards the original pack-opener with shop tickets. This system retains the "chase" element of pack-opening while allowing for more targeting and a social element.

Takeaway: Spread players’ successes to others in ways that connect them, without subverting motivation.

The community showcase system enables players to create and share custom binders and display boards, which earn shop tickets through likes. Customizable cosmetic options for these features tie into monetization while fostering social engagement.

This rewards players for sharing the cards they've acquired, collected, and curated to reinforce retention and monetization from a stronger social angle than typically seen in digital TCGs.

Takeaway: Make it easy to showcase collections with passive but rewarded social mechanisms.

Metrics and Monetization

In terms of monetization, there are a few areas of focus that either speed up card acquisition or provide premium cosmetics:

• Pack-opening timer reductions.
• Wonder Pick stamina recovery.
• Purchasing a Premium Pass subscription, which provides access to various cosmetics and a second booster pack timer.
• To give an idea of what the monetization of opening card packs is like, a booster pack is about $1.20 (or around $0.10 per hour reduced) in Poké Gold.

Meanwhile, since Marvel Snap is the biggest mobile TCG in town, let’s compare some estimated metrics over the past 90 days.

Pocket’s monthly revenue grew to $118.81M and active users to 28.06M (remaining consistent in January thus far). This is massive growth considering it launched on October 31, 2024, with social collecting helping drive virality as players showed off rare cards and binders. A big part of the success here is also the massive collector-driven fanbase in Japan, which monetized far better than even the U.S. players.

Marvel Snap has been stagnating, with a monthly revenue drop down to $4.711M and active users to 2.38M. Snap’s stagnation is related to being on the opposite side of the collection spectrum as it drip-feeds a few new cards per month with expensive direct card acquisition. Snap’s developer Second Dinner has acknowledged that the current card acquisition system isn’t working out well enough, and it will likely make some adjustments this year.

Snap also recently got caught up in the brief TikTok ban, resulting in a multiday downtime for U.S. players and a search for a new publishing partner. The game might also lose players to Pocket due to the frustration in collecting cards overall.

Takeaway: Making it hard to collect can provide short term gains, but player frustration builds.

Trading for Fun and Profit

The introduction today of card trading could enhance social collecting while potentially affecting monetization. Trading, a popular feature in Pokémon TCG Online that was absent from Pokémon TCG Live, returns with limitations designed to avoid monetization cannibalization: friend-only exchanges, lower-rarity only cards, a new stamina system, and a new currency cost that requires destroying duplicates. These constraints aim to boost social engagement while preserving monetization opportunities.

Takeaway: Empower players to socialize around collecting, with careful constraints.

Overall Thoughts

Pokémon TCG Pocket strategically complements rather than competes with Pokémon TCG Live, introducing IAP monetization absent from previous iterations. This dual-product approach — offering both full (Live) and simplified (Pocket) versions — mirrors Yu-Gi-Oh!'s successful Master Duel and Duel Links strategy.

While emphasizing collecting aligns with Pokémon TCG's core strength, it potentially weakens retention among players seeking deeper gameplay. The Pokémon Company has partially addressed this through solo battles, allowing players to enjoy their collections without facing competitive meta decks.

The game has already demonstrated many events, promos, bonus wonder picks, and new cosmetics that could help with retention. Frequent card pack releases also maintain collector interest, despite its simplistic gameplay. Though opportunities exist for additional social features like clubs, the Pokémon Company maintains its characteristic restraint regarding player communication, avoiding even basic features like in-match emotes or phrases.

Despite risks associated with prioritizing collection over gameplay depth, Pokémon TCG's enduring success in physical markets suggests continued interest will follow for Pocket, even if the gameplay is shallow. Whether focusing on gameplay or collecting, Pocket demonstrates valuable techniques for making collecting both meaningful and social that go beyond just trading card games, with techniques especially applicable to gacha games. After all, what’s the value of having a great collection if no one sees it?

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