Special Report

Pokémon GO Fest 2022 drives more players outdoors - and in game

Increased spend shows the ongoing value of events - both in-game and live in keeping an active and engaged audience

Pokémon GO Fest 2022 drives more players outdoors - and in game

This article is part of an ongoing series of data-driven articles from PocketGamer.biz and data.ai (formerly App Annie) highlighting trends in the global mobile games sector using data.ai’s Game IQ analytics.

One of the rising stars in the data.ai Q2 2022 Mobile Market Pulse Top Apps and Games was the perenially popular augmented reality (AR) catch-em-up Pokémon GO.

While the game enjoys a healthy audience in multiple markets, the Q2 2022 Mobile Market Pulse noted an especially strong boost in regions around the world. This can be attributed to both the launch of a new season - Season of GO - which launched on June 1st, as well as anticipation of the larger Pokémon GO Fest 2022 which took place in August.

Originally introduced in December 2020, ‘seasons’ are three-month-long in-game periods, which tie several events to a unifying theme and introduce a range of new features for players across multiple regions. These have proven enormously popular with players across the globe, as they compete and collaborate to unlock and access time, or regionally-locked exclusive content.

The in-game seasons are complimented by the game’s much larger scale ‘live’ festival, which attracts players from multiple countries and in 2022 took place in-person, with three major global events in Berlin, Seattle and Sapporo.

According to Niantic, during the festival, participants captured 1.75 billion Pokémon and explored 150 million kilometres on foot.

For a game with such strong intellectual property (IP) at its core, the company’s focus on regular in-game events and an annual celebration of players can be seen as having a clear impact on re-engagement.

In the Q2 2022 Mobile Market Pulse report, Pokémon GO ranked in the top 10 for quarter-over-quarter breakout consumer spend in:

  • UK (number two)
  • Turkey (number three)
  • US (number three)
  • Germany (number four)
  • Australia (number four)
  • Singapore (number five)
  • France (number seven)
  • South Korea (number eight)
  • Brazil (number nine)
  • Japan (number eleven)

The results are yet to be collated, but the indications are that Pokémon GO will continue this rise in the Q3 edition of the data.ai Mobile Market Pulse - watch this space!

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DATA.AI’s Q2 2022 Mobile Market Pulse Top Apps and Games offers even greater insight into the global mobile markets and the performance of the leading apps and games in key regions around the world. The report is available for free and can be downloaded here.

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