Pokémon GO surpassed Candy Crush in fastest to $800 million in 2016
Pokémon GO was one of the most popular mobile games the world has ever seen, and a new report from App Annie further confirms that claim. In a 2016 “retrospective”, the market researcher claims that Pokémon GO earned $800 million in revenue in just 110 days.
The reason why this is significant is not the amount of money that was made, but that it hit $800 million more than 2x faster than Candy Crush. Candy Crush Saga was released in November of 2012 and reached the $800 million threshold in just 250 days, and then held onto that record for almost 4 years.
Then Pokémon GO happened, the craze began, and the money started rolling in for Niantic Labs and Nintendo. In fact, by the end of 2016, the game earned more than $950 million which is still faster than many popular mobile games that have been previously released.
The App Annie Retrospective also took a look at the Halloween event within Pokémon GO to see how long users played the game. Leading up to the start of the event, there were about 3 million total hours logged per day, but that number spiked to almost 7 million after the Halloween event began.
It’s no doubt that 2016 will be known as the “Year of the Pokémon” in terms of gaming, but these numbers show just how popular the game really was. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the game still maintains a stranglehold on users, but maybe Niantic can do something to bring everyone back in 2017.