People Still Play That? ‘Pokémon GO’ Just Made $176 Million In August, #1 In The World

Pokemon GO

Niantic

I remain truly astonished with the momentum that Niantic has been able to sustain with Pokémon GO, taking it from a monster megahit in summer 2016 to...well, it’s still a monster megahit in 2019, it turns out.

When you bring up Pokémon GO these days, the common refrain you’ll hear back is “people still play that?” And the answer is yes, yes they do. And quite a lot of them, in fact.

Pokémon GO just had its highest grossing month since 2016, according to SuperData. GO brought in $176 million in August, more than three years after its initial release. The unseats the usual chart-leader, and more heavily monetized title, Honour of Kings for the first time in a good long while.

While Niantic’s WB collaboration, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has kind of fizzled and sputtered, GO is stronger than ever thanks to continued investment from Niantic adding more and more features, in addition to more and more Pokémon, to keep players engaged.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where this renaissance of Pokémon GO began, but if I had to guess, it was probably around the time that friends and trading entered the game, as it instantly became a lot more social and more like the handhelds.

Pokemon GO

Niantic

As for how GO is making so much money? While Niantic doesn’t break down exactly what it’s selling, I am absolutely convinced that the majority of its revenue comes from raid passes, which allow for infinite raiding of special event legendaries and other rare Pokémon in raids. “Raid hours” now have people try to get as many big-time raids in as possible in a limited time, and that means buying however many raid passes it takes to get the job done. Hence, more revenue.

August is usually the biggest month of the year for GO, so I would expect this to dip a bit going forward. But we have just seen the launch of Gen 5 Pokémon, which begins a whole new era of the game, and Nintendo and The Pokémon Company would be crazy not to have some sort of elaborate GO/Sword and Shield crossover event for the launch of that game this fall.

Pokémon GO is not going anywhere, at least not with this level of investment Niantic is putting into it, and the investment on the players’ side as well, given how much time (and how many steps) they’ve put into building their Pokedex at this point. For many, GO is now more compelling than the handheld games ever were, or it’s their first Pokémon experience period, and they’re beyond hooked.

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