>>39501066A lot of franchises are based around less than profitable venues that use said property to push product through a much more profitable venue by acting as a glorified ad. That's literally the business model of most eighties cartoons. They lost a lot of or didnt make much money from their cartoons themselves and only made their profits maainly back from other avenues such as toylines, tie in deals, and so on. Pokemon uses its games and anime to push it's products in the same way, the anime doesn't make that much money but it's vital for making money becaues of how effective it is at pushing merch to kids. Even consoles work llike this. The xbox and playstation are generally sold at a loss so that they're able to be pushed to consumers who will then subsidies these sunken costs through buying games and insensitivity companies to spend money on licenses and such when the player numbers justify the cost, which helps to cover the costs of each console's sunken cost and then some. Even fuckign video games do this like free to play games, the game's just there to advertise the cosmetics and payable items when it comes to things like F2P games. They lose money on actually developing the game because the revenue of the cosmetics makes enogh to justify that. Pokemon's the same way. The games might make money but their total revenue for the franchise's lifetime is only like a fifth or less of the overall revenue. Heck, supposedly the animes not even five percent of the total franchise's revenue amount, but its so good as an ad that it justifies its cost. The games are like this too, they make money sure but their main point is to supply the merch for things to sell and to then advertise those things to sell.
