Valve's Gabe Newell heaps praise on the Pokemon frachise

When the Pokemon franchise first started to take off, many thought it would be a flash in the pan. Nothing more than a flavor-of-the-month situation, and the brand would disappear into nothingness. Here we are 20+ years later, and the series is still going ridiculously strong.

Most recognize this as an amazing feat, which requires a constantly-moving Herculean effort from the team behind the franchise. Valve's Gabe Newell is the latest to throw some kind words towards Pokemon, which came during an interview in which Mr. Newell discussed Valve's multi-faceted approach to some projects.

“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…”