A little more than three years after Pokémon GO first launched, the app has managed to accrue more than $3 billion in gross revenue.
Cast your minds back to the summer of 2016. A time when parks were filled with people staring intently at their phone screens. Instead of scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, they were playing Pokémon GO. It almost felt as if literally everyone was playing the game. Have we ever been closer to world peace than we were that summer? Probably not.
For many of Pokémon GO's original players, it might feel as if the game has slowly faded away since then. During the year that followed, that might well have been the case. In 2016, Pokémon GO grossed $832 million according to Sensor Tower. This is pretty impressive considering it wasn't released until the summer. During the entirety of 2017, players spent $589 million.
Rather than sit back and watch that number gradually drop from year to year, Niantic took action. Those still playing Pokémon GO will have noticed that new features and further generations of Pokémon have been coming thick and fast, especially during the last 12 months. Regular and welcome updates led to the game raking in $816 million in 2018, and it seems as if a record might well be set this year.
So far in 2019, Pokémon GO has grossed $774 million, as you can see above. That means unless all of its users collectively decide to not spend a single penny on the app for the rest of the year, that 2016 record is going to be broken. It also means the game has managed to surpass a pretty special threshold. At last count, Pokémon GO had grossed more than $3 billion, which isn't too shabby for three and a bit years' work.
The app shows no signs of slowing any time soon either. Niantic has already announced that in 2020, trainers will be able to battle others remotely. It also seems very likely that a couple of crossover events with Sword & Shield will be taking place, too. With all of that on top of even more Pokémon being released into the wild for trainers to catch, perhaps 2020 could be Pokémon GO's first $1 billion year.
Source: Sensor Tower