Pokémon has serious staying (and sales) power. If anyone ever questions that, be sure to mention that the mobile game Pokémon Masters EX made $75 million in its first year alone, making it the second-best-selling mobile Pokémon game ever.
Pokémon Masters places the focus of the story on you—the trainer—and gives you a better look at some of the more famous trainers from the game's history. You'll explore more of the personal lives and lore of the trainers and their Pokémon; the relationships and falling outs that helped shape the current universe; and explore new places and stories, all while battling it out with your pocket monsters. Initially, the game was met with a lot of enthusiasm for this new perspective of the universe, however, things began to turn a little sour when players experienced server issues and several "gotcha" mechanics that felt like they were being scammed.
Hilarious hashtags aside, the developers took player input to heart and rebranded the game into its current iteration—Pokémon Masters EX—with the intent of providing a good player experience. Based on the sales data that we have now, it looks like they met that goal. Masters EX has become the second best-selling Pokémon mobile game at launch, only losing to the gargantuan title Pokémon Go, which has grossed $3.9 billion since its release four years ago. According to Sensor Tower, Japan was the biggest contributor to earnings, having spent $39.3 million on the game, or 52% of the total.
Coming in second and third were the US with $17.5 million, and Hong Kong with $3 million spent respectively. The gains don't seem to be stopping there, either. After being rebranded as Masters EX and adding content updates, the game saw a four-fold increase in spending week-over-week, earning $5.4 million since that rebranding.
That kind of increase in revenues would make any company very happy. If the trend continues—which is unlikely, but it could happen—Pokémon Masters could earn $300 million by this time next year. Admittedly, that's a drop in the multi-billion dollar bucket that Niantic is carrying with Pokémon Go, but that's still an incredibly impressive haul for a mobile game. Time will tell if future updates and additional content will continue to bring customers back for more. Until then, let's all take a moment and congratulate Pokémon Masters EX for its commitment to the players and not letting the money take precedent.
Source: Sensor Tower