Ten years in the past this week, a bunch of former Google engineers launched a mobile game with an unusual premise: As a substitute of maintaining gamers glued to their telephone screens, Pokémon Go turned your complete world right into a playground by overlaying gameplay on real-world maps and places, and rewarding individuals who stroll the additional mile.
“Our imaginative and prescient [was to] encourage folks to discover the world collectively by making Pokémon really feel actual in the true world,” says Ed Wu, who has been a part of the Pokémon Go crew from day one. Wu is now president of video games at Scopely, which acquired Pokémon Go and a handful of associated titles for $3.5 billion final yr.
Pokémon Go’s tackle cell gaming turned it right into a shock hit, surpassing 500 million downloads two months after launch. Much more spectacular than that preliminary success has been Pokémon Go’s immense endurance: A decade later, tens of tens of millions of gamers nonetheless hunt for Pokémon each month.
Each day playtime is up 10% yr over yr, in response to Scopely, which claims the sport generated greater than $1 billion in income in 2024 alone. Since launch, the sport is estimated to have topped $9 billion in revenue on Apple’s and Google’s app shops, making it the fifth-most-lucrative cell sport of all time.
Now Wu’s crew is considering methods to take real-world gameplay to the following degree and problem folks to enterprise even farther into the outside. “I’m an enormous fan of our nationwide parks,” he says. “I feel it’s incredible that a number of them don’t have cell service. However to have the ability to open up the sport only for a minute while you attain some sort of peak, I feel that’s fairly thrilling.”
From a faux video to an actual sport
To start with, Pokémon Go was little greater than a joke: Again in 2014, Google released an April Fool’s video that claimed the corporate was looking for people to scour treacherous mountains, tough seas, and faraway savannas to hunt for Pokémon. Gamers supposedly had a day to seize all the lovable monsters, and the winner was promised a job at Google as the corporate’s new “Pokémon Grasp.”
The problem was clearly faux. Inside Google, nevertheless, it struck a chord with an R&D crew generally known as Niantic Labs that had been engaged on a location-based cell sport referred to as Ingress. Very like Pokémon Go later would, Ingress challenged gamers to battle with one another in real-world places of their neighborhoods. And with the April Idiot’s video rapidly going viral, the Niantic crew was questioning: What if the faux problem grew to become an actual sport?
After receiving buy-in from Google’s management and the Pokémon Co., the Niantic crew started constructing Pokémon Go with a number of the similar geodata that powered Ingress. The ensuing sport had Pokémon seem within the wild throughout folks’s neighborhoods, as visualized on a digital map proven within the sport. Gamers may seize these monsters by visiting particular places and throwing digital Poké Balls at them on their telephone screens. Visiting particular factors of curiosity allowed gamers to energy up on Poké Balls, amongst different issues.
Whereas Ingress had at all times been a little bit of a distinct segment hit, Pokémon Go rapidly captured the creativeness of the lots. Over the previous decade, it has attracted greater than 800 million gamers, which altogether have walked upwards of 60 billion miles because the sport’s launch. Reside occasions, just like the Pokémon Go Fest that’s occurring July 11 and 12, have attracted tens of millions of attendees (Niantic offered 1 million-plus tickets for the 2024 Pokémon Go Fest alone).
Ed Wu’s personal mother and father have been enthusiastic Pokémon Go gamers since day one. They’ve additionally helped Wu perceive how impactful anchoring gameplay in the true world will be. “My dad has kind 2 adult-onset diabetes,” Wu says. “His blood sugar was far and wide earlier than this sport got here out. Since he began enjoying a decade in the past, he obtained it utterly underneath management as a result of he’s strolling day by day.”
Some painful misses and a brand new shock hit
Wu’s crew confronted its personal challenges alongside the best way. Inspired by Pokémon Go’s success, they tried for years to use related sport mechanics to different well-known franchises. Most of those makes an attempt failed. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, a Pokémon Go-like sport developed in partnership with Warner Bros., shut down after 2 1/2 years in early 2022.
An NBA sport was shuttered half a yr after its launch the next yr. Niantic additionally canceled a number of unreleased video games, together with a Marvel’s Avengers title, when it shut down its Los Angeles game studio and laid off 230 employees in summer 2023. “Recreation making is rarely simple,” Wu says. “That’s like rule primary.”
Looking back, Wu additionally concedes that Niantic missed the mark on a few of these titles. “You possibly can’t simply copy Pokémon Go,” he says. “You bought to [be] considerate about what you’re doing to encourage folks to discover the world. There [needs to be] one thing that clicks concerning the world that you simply’re making an attempt to create in folks’s creativeness.”
That’s to not say Pokémon Go has to stay a one-hit surprise without end. Alongside the hit sport, Scopely additionally acquired Monster Hunters and Pikmin Bloom, two titles which have proven success in placing their very own spin on cell gaming anchored in the true world.
Pikmin Bloom particularly could have the potential to change into one other shock hit: The sport, which incorporates a extra cozy, nature-centric vibe than Pokémon Go, has seen its every day common customers enhance by almost 80% from April 2025 to April 2026, in response to Scopely, and has been topping the app shops in Asia repeatedly this yr.
“As soon as folks begin enjoying Pikmin Bloom, they don’t cease,” Wu says. “It [might] be some of the retentive video games in your complete cell trade.”
Subsequent up for Pokémon Go: mobile satellite tv for pc connectivity?
One other problem for Niantic was that the corporate at all times had ambitions past gaming, with plans to monetize its geospatial expertise for augmented actuality and different cutting-edge purposes. At one level, Niantic even developed its personal prototype AR glasses in partnership with Qualcomm.
Wu nonetheless likes the concept of finally taking the sport past telephone screens, however he has reservations concerning the present state of augmented actuality glasses. “I don’t suppose the {hardware} is essentially there but,” he says.
Scopely’s acquisition of Pokémon Go put an finish to that rigidity between Niantic’s gaming and expertise ambitions. The belongings that weren’t a part of the deal are actually owned by Niantic Spatial, a brand new firm that goals to map the world in 3D and license its geospatial knowledge to robotics and AI firms. (Pokémon Go not shares any knowledge with Niantic Spatial.)
Wu’s crew, then again, which rebranded to Scopely Explore this week, is squarely centered on gaming, and needs Pokémon Go to thrive for an additional decade. Requested what improvements may very well be subsequent for the sport, Wu factors to satellite tv for pc connectivity as a potential approach to unlock the ultimate frontier, whether or not that’s in a nationwide park or one other space with out conventional cellphone protection.
“Pushing of us to discover, and to really feel like this sport is a significant reward once they get all the best way on the market,” he says, “that’s actually thrilling.”
