Financially, 2019 Was Pokemon Go’s Best Year Yet

Gotta catch ’em all.

Pokemon Go enters 2020 coming off of its best year yet—yes, even better than its Internet-breaking launch in 2016.

In 2019, Niantic’s augmented reality game brought in an estimated $894 million, Sensor Tower estimates. For reference, in 2016, Pokemon Go brought in an estimated $832 million.

After its release essentially took the world by storm, the game fell off a bit by amassing “only” $589 million in 2017. In 2018, it rebounded and made $816 million.

In 2019, Pokemon Go had its fourth and fifth best months ever in August and September following the introduction of Team Rocket Go. The top three best months ever still lie in 2016 with its first three months in service. It is also important to point out that the game launched in July of 2016, so in about half of a year it raised a large chunk of 2019’s total.

Pokemon Go was the fifth highest grossing app in the world in 2019, sitting behind Candy Crush’s $1.1 billion. The highest grossing game of 2019 was Honor of Kings with $1.5 billion.

While Pokemon Go saw another year of success for Niantic, the other game they released in 2019 did not do as hot. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite brought in $23 million. Still a lot of money, but nowhere near the success of Pokemon. The following image from SensorTower shows how dominating Pokemon Go is in the location-based gaming area.

Pokemon Go is the first location-based game to increase revenue over its launch year. In 2019, 54 percent of its income came from the Google Play Store, and the United States was the highest paying country for the game at $335 million. Japan was second at $286 million.

Niantic’s commitment to adding new Pokemon, new community events, and other features clearly worked for them in 2019. Stay updated with Gamepur to see any new updates from the game in 2020. So far in its lifetime, Pokemon Go has made over $3.1 billion.