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Rumored Pokemon Winds and Waves budgets are likely much larger than leaks, former Nintendo marketing leads say, because they don't cover "significant" marketing costs
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Kaan Serin
2025-10-17
The Pokemon Generation 10 budgets that were included in the latest round of unverified but sweeping Game Freak leaks likely aren't the full amount, according to Nintendo's former marketing leads Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang. Last year's Pokemon leaks popped back up again this week with information about Pokemon Legends: Z-A and beyond. Most notable was the supposed title for the next mainline game, Pokemon Winds and Waves, and a budget reportedly hovering around $20 million or 3 billion yen (all of which should be taken with a pinch of salt since budgets can change and leaks can be false). During their most recent podcast, Ellis and Yang explain that they already had an inkling that most Switch exclusives probably didn't cost as much to make as blockbusters on other consoles. The leaked Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West budgets make Pokemon's alleged allowance look like chump change, for example. Pokemon Legends: Z-A only needs to sell 200k units to break even, former Nintendo marketing leads estimate, so "they should inject a bit more money into these things" As Pokemon Winds and Waves rumors swirl after huge leak, ex-Nintendo marketing lead says "Nintendo and Pokemon really need to rethink their approach to information security" Everyone's freaking out at the rumored $650 Lego Pokemon set, but here's why I wouldn't panic just yet But the duo weren't prepared for how low the budget for Gen10 was said to be. "Even this information here was kind of shocking for me to see," Ellis says. "I will say, I think that [the $20 million figure] is strictly the game production and there are other things that go into the total budget, like marketing, which for Pokemon games is a significant amount of money," he continued. "That money we do know about," Yang said of their time at the company. "The development budgets we never saw, but for sure, the marketing budgets we understand what that is like. And obviously this is a AAA game, a very important game for Nintendo and The Pokemon Company to market. So those marketing budgets were pretty significant." Marketing for Pokemon also gets a bit murky when you consider it's constantly on the cross-media promotion train. Card packs, new seasons of the anime, merch, the games, Pokemon GO, and events with various museums are constantly feeding into making sure the series never leaves the public consciousness for too long. For now, check out the full Pokemon Legends: Z-A map and find out how to catch all legendaries in Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
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