So, I'm not sure if you all have noticed or not, but we've been writing a lot about Pokemon recently. In the articles and comments of some of these stories, an old bugbear has come up several times. Who exactly owns Pokemon" How much of a benefit to Nintendo is the success of Pokemon Go [Free]" It's a more complicated situation than it initially appears, and I'll tell you up-front, there aren't any publicly-available concrete answers. Still, I think I can offer some clarification for curious readers and confused Nintendo shareholders out there, so let's go on a journey together. A Pokemon journey! Without any Pokemon. Sorry, they're not in the budget.
The Pokemon brand is generally associated with Nintendo, and it's not hard to figure out why. The games, apart from a few mobile ventures, have only ever appeared on Nintendo hardware. Pokemon's characters have crossed over into other Nintendo titles from time to time, most notably Smash Bros. Oh, and the company's name appears in the copyright notices of literally every Pokemon thing. That's probably adding to that association. The association isn't completely inaccurate. Nintendo is one of the owners, and in all likelihood, the one with the highest shares.
But wait, what about The Pokemon Company" They own the Pokemon IP and are in turn owned in near-equal shares by Nintendo and two other companies, right" So that means Nintendo's slice is 33% and if Creatures and Game Freak (the other co-owners of The P...