Celebrating Pokémon TCG Pocket, our Best Game of 2025

Tactile, authentic, and accessible – Pokémon TCG Pocket went above and beyond expectations to deliver an enriched adaptation of Pokémon TCG that took our spot for Best Game of 2025.

We had the chance to sit down with TCG Pocket’s producer Keita Hirobe to talk about how the Pokémon Company set about translating the beloved card-collecting game into our favorite game of 2025.

Keita Hirobe: Pokémon TCG Pocket is a digital version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, which was first released in 1996. We created it as a way for players to casually collect and battle with digital Pokémon cards. You can have fun opening two no-cost packs a day or taking on battles with simplified mechanics that last about five minutes.

When we started development, there were already many digital TCG apps for mobile, so our team had in-depth discussions about whether it was a good time to launch a digital Pokémon TCG. We concluded that we wanted to create a game that everyone could easily enjoy the fun of collecting Pokémon cards in.

For the physical TCG, the collectability of the cards was a big appeal, but translating that experience of collecting cards to a digital format was a huge challenge because it hadn't really been done before.

Every year, many amazing games are released, so it is a great honor that ours was chosen to receive such a wonderful award. I believe this is because of the fans who have enjoyed playing with Pokémon cards for nearly 30 years, and we want to share this joy with all Pokémon fans and our players.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude for the development teams at our partners, Creatures and DeNA, who worked so hard during a long development phase filled with trial and error

This award gives our development team a lot of confidence and encouragement for the future. We want to use this award as encouragement to keep working hard to make Pokémon TCG Pocket a better game that everyone will love for a long time.

We created this game with the goal of making it enjoyable for a wide range of players, and we always listen to player feedback.

One example is the trading feature – we’ve already announced improvements for it based on feedback from our players, and we will continue updating it to make trading more fun and user-friendly. We want to continue working with our players to improve Pokémon TCG Pocket.

We plan to update the game’s battle mechanics and collection features in 2026 and beyond. For example, we’ve introduced a new battle rule called Mega Evolution for our B series, which will bring new opportunities for collecting and battling.

We also plan to improve the trading feature to make it even easier for players to collect cards. We will continue our development so we can deliver new ways to play that exceed our players’ expectations.