The Pokémon-catching game has earned $5 billion. Considering that its premiere was in 2016, Pokémon Go has made 1 billion every single ear of its existence.
For comparison, one of the mobile games that made it close to PG is Genshin Impact, earning 1 billion dollars over a year (its entire lifespan).
Then we have Candy Crush that made 1 billion+, but only recently: in 2020. Prior to that, it made $740 million annually in its best season.
Another “billionaire game” is Brawl Stars by the Finnish company Supercell. But this is the lifetime revenue we’re talking about, not yearly.
The biggest market for Pokémon Go is, of course, America. They make roughly 36.6% of all in-game sales there. Japan — the game’s homeland — occupies the second position with 32% of in-app purchases. And the bronze goes to Germany with 5.4%.
More than half of these sales take place on Android devices. App Store is responsible for 47.2% of all sales made. Statistics for Blackberry aren’t known.
The game was downloaded more than one billion times in total. Most of the downloads come from the US, India, and Brazil.
This stable run, which’s been going on for 5 years, proves that Pokémon Go has a lot of potential to keep thriving in the future.
Initially, the game’s concept was conceived in 2015 when Nintendo’s management realized that the company was in danger: the mobile market prevailed over their games. Licensing the game to the Niantic — a studio from San Francisco — was a master move.
Just in the first quarter since the release, Pokémon Go has amassed half a billion downloads, helping Nintendo get out of the financial tumult and reviving the legendary franchise.
At the moment, Nintendo is seen as one of the most promising tech companies to invest in. Pokémon Go and Switch sales are reasons for that. But we still have to see how Switch will survive the race with Valve's Steam Dec console.
