Pokémon boss wants your great-great-great-great-great-grandkids to still be playing

The Pokémon Company doesn’t just want you playing Pokémon, it wants a whole dynasty of Pokémon players catching ’em all for centuries.

COO of The Pokémon Company, Takato Utsunomiya, shared his goals to bring the franchise not just to your kids, but their kids’ kids’ kids’ kids’ kids. “Our goal is to keep Pokémon alive for hundreds of years – making sure it survives well past our lifetimes,” Utsunomiya said in an interview with The Guardian.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone given that Pokémon is the highest-grossing franchise on Earth. A big part of this is its gaming offerings, but with TV shows, movies, merch, and more, Pokémon has already cemented its domination of the globe.

Given the scope of the franchise, Utsunomiya says that the series needs to maintain that range when outlining its audience. He says that while it’s easy to focus on adults with disposable incomes, children are still an important part of the audience, and it’s necessary to keep them interested. “Kids are very honest – they won’t play something they don’t like. If your brand feels old or boring, they will immediately dismiss it,” Utsunomiya explained.

If you’re a Kanto defender then you probably already feel like Pokémon is 100 years old, however, it’s yet to turn 30—that will happen in 2026. With a goal as ambitious as centuries of Pokémon domination one can only imagine what the games of 3023 will even look like—and just how many of those creature designs will be compared to Digimon.

It sounds like a long shot, but given the state of Pokémon right now, the franchise surviving for centuries isn’t impossible. Despite the completely warranted criticism, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are proving to be extremely successful games. Who knows, maybe one day we won’t just have Pokémon planes, but Pikachu rockets in space. Team Rocket can blast off once again.