Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket makes perfect sense
It hasn’t always been easy to get Pokémon card packs over the past several years. During the pandemic, Pokémon cards saw a massive surge in popularity, so big that the Pokémon Company had to take drastic measures, producing more than 9 billion cards over the course of a single year as a way to address the shortage. It’s unclear what caused the boom, but it’s likely a mix of people picking up new (or old) pandemic hobbies and the increase of content creators buying cards and opening packs on streams. Basically, Pokémon cards became a nostalgia-fueled way to gamble.
YouTube creators and Twitch streamers started buying up packs to open on stream, and the viewers were there. To get a sense of how popular Pokémon pack opening was on Twitch during the pandemic, we can look toward Twitch Metrics, a third-party site that tracks Twitch data. From March 2020 to January 2021, Pokémon card unboxing grew by 3,000% in monthly viewership. One streamer, Luxury Ball Collectibles, spent six hours opening Pokémon card packs a few years ago. Another YouTuber, Deep Pocket Monster, frequently racks up hundreds of thousands of views. These sorts of videos are alluring because they’ve got big personalities, suspense, and drama. Viewers get all the adrenaline of gambling and pulling out that rare card without any of the risk.
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That’s why the upcoming Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, announced Tuesday during the Pokémon Presents Pokémon Day broadcast, makes perfect sense: It’s a way to mimic the experience of watching someone open a card on stream — but better, since you’re directly involved. And with two free packs per day, there’s still that mitigated risk (unless you purchase more, of course). The Pokémon Company is working with Creatures Inc., which makes physical cards, and DeNA, the studio behind Pokémon Masters EX, to release the app on Android and iOS sometime in 2024.
Though you can take part in short, simple battles, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket appears to be centered
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