Valve boss Gabe Newell has plenty of praise for Pokemon

Pokemon has been an incredibly successful franchise since the beginning. Even after 20 years, the franchise is still going strong.

During a recent media event, Valve boss Gabe Newell actually spoke about Pokemon while discussing the company’s future plans. Here’s what Newell said about the IP’s longstanding success:

“When you look at post-Magic the Gathering, for us there are a couple of certain interesting points along the way like the sort of designers and people who are thinking about customers. Pokemon did this amazing job of doing – still probably the benchmark for saying, ‘if you’re trying to do a game, if you’re trying to do a trading card game this well, if you’re trying to do linear media,’ they really have done it better than anyone else. It is still the single most valuable entertainment franchise in history – more than the Super Bowl, more than certainly any of Valve’s products, more than Harry Potter. Pokemon is that. So that’s why that’s important…”

Newell also said that he thinks Pokemon is “awesome” and did “really clever stuff” with the TV show, but Valve isn’t trying to emulate that with its own products.