After originally launching in early July, Pokemon GO was quick to take over the world. Niantic Labs’ augmented reality (AR) mobile game proved that all people who grew up in the nineties ever wanted to do was go outside and catch pocket monsters in the real world. Given the popularity of the Pokemon brand and general accessibility of Pokemon GO, this game managed to shoot past 500 million downloads in only two short months after release. In most aspects, Pokemon GO will be remembered as the most successful mobile launch in history.
With that said, the game isn’t as popular as it used to be. Still, declining popularity of Pokemon GO isn’t that surprising seeing how fall brought us colder weather which makes going outside to play an AR game less pleasant than it used to be. Of course, pleasing hundreds of millions of players with anything that isn’t a casual puzzle game is also not an easy task which is how many industry experts explain the fact that Pokemon GO is trailing off a bit in recent months. Regardless of that, this is still one of the most popular mobile games on the Play Store and consequently continues to make a lot of money.
Speaking of which, we’ve just found out how much Nintendo made from Pokemon GO so far. The Japanese entertainment giant recently posted an earnings report for its last quarter which reveals that the company made approximately $115 million from licensing the Pokemon IP to Niantic Labs. Naturally, not all of that money actually went to Nintendo but was distributed throughout its subsidiaries and affiliates like the Pokemon Company. While that number is obviously impressive, it’s worth noting that it only represents a small fraction of what Pokemon GO made so far. According to latest reports, Niantic Labs achieved $600 million in revenue in the first three months since launching the game. Comparing the two numbers together leads to a conclusion that Nintendo gets a bit less than one-fifth of all money made by the San Francisco, California-based studio. This also seemingly corroborates reports which emerged over the summer according to which Google and Apple make more money from Pokemon GO than Nintendo thanks to their respective app stores.