2020 has been big for the video game industry. The main reason for that is the pandemic, unfortunately, but as everyone has been staying home, more and more people turned to video games. This led to Nintendo having very big year with games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo wasn’t the only company to have big year. A new report by SensorTower has revealed that Pokemon GO had its biggest year ever, generating $1 billion in the first 10 months of 2020. With that, Pokemon GO lifetime revenue has gone over $4 billion.
To put this year in comparison, when Pokemon GO was released in 2016, the game made more than $832 million. In 2017, spending declined 29 percent. Since then, player spending went up each year with 2020 becoming its best year. Player spending has increased 11 percent more than all of 2019. In the first 10 months, player spending is 30 percent more than it was last year. The game has ranked as the third-best mobile game by global spending, sitting behind PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings.
With its big year in 2020, Pokemon Go has accumulated close to $4.2 billion in player spending globally. In the United States, revenue has hit $1.5 billion which is 36.3 percent of total spending making it the most lucrative market for the game. Japan makes up 31.3 percent, $1.3 billion. Germany is third with $238.6 million, only 5.7 percent of total spending. In terms of downloads, the game has generated nearly 600 million unique installs worldwide. The U.S. is also No. 1 for downloads with 109 million installs which is 18.2 percent of the total. Brazil has close to 11 percent of the total with 65.2 million downloads. Mexico is No. 3 with 37.3 million downloads, 6.2 percent of the total.
Like everybody in the video game industry and community, Pokemon GO has made adjustments to the game with stay-at-home features so people can still play the game even though they shouldn’t be outside.