With the recent announcement of Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, it’s important to remember that The Pokémon Company has continued to make serious bank off of their mobile title Pokémon Go. New financial reports made public by Japan’s government reveal that The Pokémon Company has netted a total of $80.8 million for their most recent fiscal year.
While this is figure is substantially lower than the $145.60 million that the company made in their last fiscal year, the year that the mobile game was released, it shows that The Pokémon Company is still generating a ton of revenue from the mobile app. To put things in perspective, the year before Pokémon Go released the company netted $5.7 million dollars — a sum that seems measly in comparison.
Pokémon Go launched on Android and iOS in July 2016. The augmented reality game quickly amassed hundreds of millions of downloads and caused the return of worldwide Poké-mania, a cultural phenomenon the world had not seen since the late 1990’s.
While many fans of Pokémon’s traditional role-playing games took issue with the casual gameplay style and the overall shoddiness of the app, Pokémon Go has continued to captivate the fans that have stuck around. Despite the majority of players falling off the wagon a few months after the app’s initial release, current estimates predict that over twenty-million people still play the game regularly.
Of course, all of this begs the question of how Pokémon Go‘s runaway success will end up influencing the success of Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!. It’s easy to see (and understand) why both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company would want some semblance of connection between the games considering the lucrative financial success that Pokémon Go has brought them. In the past Pokémon developers have not shied away from alternative play styles and gimmicks. Most recently, the recent gimmick was the PokéWalker, a clear predecessor to the PokéBall shown off in the new trailer for Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!.
Check out the trailer for Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! below. The game will be released on November 16th, 2018 for the Nintendo Switch. Obviously, you can also grab the game on Amazon if you want to secure the pre-order before scalpers get to it. Otherwise, check out the biggest trailer of the night:
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