Pokémon (Japanese: ポケモン, Hepburn: Pokemon, English: ), also known as Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター) in Japan, is a media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a Japanese consortium between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. The franchise copyright is shared by all three companies, but Nintendo is the sole owner of the trademark. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995, and is centered on fictional creatures called "Pokémon", which humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train to battle each other for sport. The English slogan for the franchise is "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Works within the franchise are set in the Pokémon universe.
The franchise began as Pokémon Red and Green (released outside of Japan as Pokémon Red and Blue), a pair of video games for the original Game Boy that were developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in February 1996. Pokémon has since gone on to become the highest-grossing media franchise of all time, with over $70 billion in revenue up until March 2017. The original video game series is the second best-selling video game franchise (behind Nintendo's Mario franchise) with more than 300 million copies sold and over 800 million mobile downloads. In addition, the Pokémon franchise includes the world's top-selling toy brand, the top-selling trading card game with over 25.7 billion cards sold, an anime television series that has become the most successful video game adaptation with over 20 seasons and 1,000 episodes in 124 countries, as well as an anime film series, a live-action film, books, manga comics, music, and merchandise. The franchise is also represented in other Nintendo media, such as the Super Smash Bros. series.
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. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006. In 2016, The Pokémon Company celebrated Pokémon's 20th anniversary by airing an ad during Super Bowl 50 in January, issuing re-releases of Pokémon Red and Blue and the 1998 Game Boy game Pokémon Yellow as downloads for the Nintendo 3DS in February, and redesigning the way the games are played. The mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go was released in July. The latest games in the main series, Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, were released worldwide on the Nintendo Switch on November 16, 2018. A live-action film adaptation based on Detective Pikachu began production in January 2018, and is set to release in 2019.
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