In news that should surprise nobody, Pokemon GO has broken the record for highest earning mobile game launch month by a long way.
Analytics firm Sensor Tower reports that Niantic’s intensely popular mobile app set a new world record after sweeping up over $200m in worldwide net revenue in the first month (and one day) alone.
To compare, the previous record holder was Clash Royale (ugh) which made around a $120m in the same amount of time. Behind that is Candy Crush Saga (ugh again), which managed about $25m.
I mean, even without the graph showing you, the numbers alone paint a pretty clear picture – Pokemon GO has fucking smashed it.
Of course it’s not hard to see why – Niantic’s game is the perfect storm of Free-To-Play (with unobtrusive microtransactions) and an IP that is recognized and beloved around the world.
Plus it basically does what most kids born in the 90’s used to dream about, which is the ability to go out and catch Pokemon in real life.
But while the game has some real potential to go even further, Niantic has made a series of odd choices lately. A recent update caused a few new bugs and even removed some key features.
Then there was the whole thing with folk claiming to have received a free legendary Pokemon from the developer – that was weird.
Still, Niantic seems to be more focused on feeding back to and communicating with the players more regularly now, so I’m sure the game will continue to sweep up disgusting piles of cash.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.