One of the world’s biggest trading card games is about to hit a huge new market. The Pokémon Company and its partners have officially announced that the Pokémon TCG will be released in the greater Chinese market at some point in the near future.
The official announcement was for the Pokémon TCG being printed in Simplified Chinese—or the language used most commonly in “Mainland China.”
The reason this is a wider release is that the Pokémon TCG has already launched in select Chinese markets, specifically Hong Kon and Taiwan with a Traditional Chinese version back in October 2019. This newer printing will hit the mainland and allow TPC to access a huge market where TCG products were previously not available natively.
The first products revealed should coincide with trademarks filed by Nintendo back in February when speculation about this move first started within the TCG community, according to PokéBeach.
If that ends up being true, the Simplified Chinese TCG sets will start with the Sun and Moon series of cards, launching with the Sun & Moon and Crossing the Sky sets. This is further backed by those sets being translated names of the Traditional Chinese launch from 2019, which will likely lead to the Simplified Chinese sets being simple translations of products that have already launched in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
PokéBeach speculates based on retailer listings that the release schedule for the Simplified Chinese products will also match the “rapid pace” of the Traditional Chinese products so TPC can catch the region up to speed for current releases (the Traditional Chinese market is already fairly caught up with the release of Incandescent Arcana). With that in mind, expect multiple compilation sets to mash products together and push the market along a bit faster.
TPC will be hosting a press conference on Bilibili, a top Chinese video streaming and content platform, on Sept. 28. This stream should include more details about the first products from this new venture and insight into TPC’s plans for the market.
You can read more about the potential competitive effects on PokéBeach.
