The air in Thursday evening, Times Square is electric. Not only because it’s raining and thousands of people Pokémon virtually launch attacks like Thunderbolt and Hyper Beam on the legendary Mega Mewtwo Ybut also because nearly 2,000 real-world trainers found themselves at one of the largest in-person Pokémon battles in history.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Julian Chokkattu
The event marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of Pokémon Gothe mobile game from Niantic which took the the world was taken by storm in 2016. The game, a mixed reality hunting game played in real physical locations viewed through players’ phones, attracted more than 130 million downloads in its first month and a record peak of 232 million. active players the same year, generating nearly a billion dollars in revenue.
Niantic’s efforts to make it one of the first mobile “forever games” were successful, with over $6 billion in lifetime player spendingaccording to Statista. Last year, Niantic was acquired by Scopely—one of the largest mobile video game publishers in the world, with titles like Monopoly, go ahead! to his credit – for 3.5 billion dollars.
Just before his debut, the first trailer for the game promised all kinds of features that weren’t available at launch. The video showed players trading Pokémon with friends, battling other trainers, and, at the very end of the clip, a swarm of trainers heading towards Times Square, where every billboard was taken over to visualize a massive battle against the fearsome Mewtwo. Yet in 10 years of life Pokémon Go Festivals Worldwide, the company has never recreated this scene, until now.
“We kind of made promises to players about what type of game this was going to be,” says Michael Steranka, vice president of product at Scopely, who worked on Pokémon Go with Niantic since 2017. “Now, 10 years later, when we look at this trailer, we feel like we’ve actually delivered on many of the promises that were made there.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: Julian Chokkattu
Invitations were sent to 2,000 people Pokémon Go stakeholders from the five boroughs of New York City through community ambassadors. (The event was held by invitation only to avoid overcrowding in what is already one of the busiest places on the planet.) Players were only aware of the themed raids taking place near Times Square, according to Mark Van Lommel, Scopely’s director of marketing communications.
At a certain time in the evening, notifications went out in the game asking players with a ticket to go to Times Square for a special event, where they were treated to a live EDM concert from Noisy luxuryafter which Mega Mewtwo Y invaded many screens and a united battle began. (Mega Mewtwo Y was ultimately defeated.)
The event was broadcast live on all Pokémon websites and social networks, and this weekend a special event Pokémon Go Fest Worldwide The virtual event will bring the same Mega Mewtwo Y gameplay experience to all trainers, without the screens of Times Square. “Everyone in the world can play it for free this weekend,” says Lommel.
Scopely claims over 800 million people have played Pokémon Go over the past decade, with over 1 trillion Pokémon captured to date. In 2024, it had over 100 million active players and in 2025, it generated $1 billion in revenue. Daily active player engagement is approximately 45 minutes, and players have traveled over 62 billion miles in search of PokéStops and Pokémon.
Kim Adams, vice president of game development at Pokémon Gosays that over the past two years, the company has grown from 50 community ambassadors (vetted volunteers who lead and organize local real-world gaming groups) to more than 3,000 worldwide.
For live events (a flagship feature that makes it unique among other mobile games)Pokémon Go has sold nearly a million tickets in 2024. And since last year, according to the company, it has seen double-digit engagement growth, with daily play time up 10% and real-world exploration up 29%.
The ability to manage thousands of players participating in a raid simultaneously hasn’t always been easy. Howie Ragunton, a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration employee who has been playing the game since its release in 2016, says he remembers the first Pokémon Go Fest 2017 in Chicago, which was a disaster due to overloaded cellular networks and unstable servers. “They learned over the years,” he said.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Julian Chokkattu
Ragunton met his wife playing the game and recently proposed to her during a Pokémon Go event in June. He says the game changed his life, having started playing it right after moving from Texas to Chicago for work. “The game helped me socialize, it got me outside, and that’s kind of what I love about it,” he says.
Since he has to travel a lot for his job, he spends a lot of time in the Niantic Wayfarer program, designating local landmarks as Waystops in the middle of America, which can transform into PokéStops in Pokémon Go which other players can visit to collect in-game items. He doesn’t get paid for this, but he can get in-game gifts for his volunteer work.
This fan-collected data can also help improve Scopely’s other games, and Adams says that’s why the company prioritizes community feedback. “We are nothing without all these people who have contributed to the game in this way; we are at their service.”
“Pokémon Go helped me stay sane,” Ragunton says. “I don’t work at big airports all the time; I work in these airports that don’t even have passenger flights – they just have private flights – but they’re nowhere, in small towns. But Pokémon Go is still there.
Will it be around for the 20th anniversary in 2036? Steranka says that Pokémon’s intellectual property has definitely helped the game maintain its momentum. But he says it’s the in-person communities the game has fostered over the past 10 years that will help it endure into the next decade. So the plan is to continue to invest in these spaces and help create more essential memories. It is important to note that the goal is to continue building Pokémon Go as a multi-generational game.
“I will go to the park with my mother, who will be 70 next week, my wife and my two children, the oldest of whom is 3 and a half, and we will all be able to enjoy Pokémon Go together“, says Steranka. “Maybe the exception is my 6-month-old baby.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: Julian Chokkattu
Steranka says the mobile game is one of the first points of contact with the Pokémon universe, and one of the development challenges is creating features that all age groups enjoy. He wouldn’t share what’s on the horizon for the franchise – if the company would try the hardware again– but he says that if there is a technology that would make sense for Pokémon Go“world-class” engineers will be there.
“What we don’t want to do is adopt technologies for the sake of adopting technologies,” Steranka says. “But if we think something has a real opportunity to improve the game, improve the experience and improve the immersion of our players, then that’s something we’re going to explore and invest in.”
Adams says that after 10 years of respectful relationship with The Pokémon Company, and now under Scopely’s leadership, the company feels “supercharged” for the future and plans to double down on its key differentiator: community.
“People need more joy in their lives right now,” Adams says. “Life can get especially difficult, and if I’m standing in line at the grocery store and Pokémon can brighten my day, I’m not the only one. For them and for us, it’s not just a game.”
