I'm merely saying you can't use Pokémon as an example - while it's commonly considered a "Nintendo Property", it is really something else entirely. I can't really think of an equivalent for what it is.
Nintendo publishes the games and owns the Pokemon Company/Pokemon Ltd--The Pokemon Game became such a huge phenomenon that it became it's own entity OWNED by Nintendo. It was the success of the game that drove the property to such heights, just like Zelda and Mario.
Publishing the games mean nothing. Nintendo has published Final Fantasy games - it does not mean they own them.
TPC/PCL/PCI is partially owned by Nintendo (I think 2/3rds).
As for what drove the success of the property so high... I'd actually argue that it wasn't just the games. It was the marketing push behind them - the licensing, the branding, the TV show, the card game.
I worked at BK when the first Pokémon movie came out during the height of the Pokémon craze. We had a HUGE promotion with Pokémon toys (you may remember, these had the killer Pokéballs with them).
Well, Tuesday nights at my store were "Family Night" - where kids meals were 99 cents. You can imagine how huge this was during the Pokémon promotion. In fact, store management talked about suspending the 99 cent kids meals during this time - parents were bringing their kids in and everyone would get 2-3 kids meals - including the parents.
Anyway - during this time, I would work the dining room, interacting with the kids, encourage trading of toys, run contests (stuffed, talking Pikachu was the "hard to get" toy and I always had some of those to give away). One thing I did was I always bought my own GameBoy and a couple of link cables - always encouraging everyone to bring in their own and trade actual Pokémon. This got *very* little response.
Hell, some weeks, I'd bring in a small TV, Smash Bros and my Nintendo 64. Rarely anyone picked Pikachu or Jigglypuff.