Pokémon Go Raids Will Make Niantic A Lot Of Money, Shocking Nobody

There was a time when I believed that Pok é mon Go was dying out. When the game first launched, it was a worldwide phenomenon. Exploding onto the scene, everyone and their mother walked around catching Pikachus and Squirtles. Then, the servers started to crash and promised updates never came, forcing players to leave in droves. PoGo never managed to achieve the same level of popularity that it had at launch, but it’s still making plenty of money.

According to Nintendo Life, Pok é mon Go has been downloaded 752 million times and made $1.2 billion in revenue. There are countries that make less money than a game about catching imaginary monsters in portable prisons. There might not be stampedes of players in Central Park trying to catch a Tauros, but there are still plenty of bodies addicted to reliving childhood nostalgia.

It’s been a long year for Niantic, adding over 100 new Pokémon, reworking gyms and adding raids to Pokémon Go. Trainers expected so much more out of the game when it first launched, but after a full year we’re finally getting what we wanted. PoGo had gotten stale, but then this burst of new content makes the game alive and fun again. We knew the game made money, so Niantic didn’t even need to change anything. But they did, and for that I’m extremely grateful.

Before raids, Pokémon Go was just wasting space on my phone. I’d occasionally open up the app, see if anything rare was around me, then close it and move onto the next mindless time waster app. Walking around in the dead of winter in the hopes of finding a Rattata or Hoothoot didn’t seem to appealing. When the raid update launched, I decided to give the AR simulator another chance. Teaming up with strangers to take down powerful beasts fueled by nostalgia and childhood passion was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

Now, I’m back in the middle of Pokémon Go. Walking around Manhattan, it’s easy to find a raid and a group of people to play with. Walking down the block, I’ll stumble on a raid in progress with a lobby full of trainers waiting for their chance to fight. Walking along the South Street Seaport, there are about five gyms, with two or three raids going on at once. I’ll pick whichever one’s starting the soonest and jump in. Sometimes we lose (especially if it’s a rank four Tyranitar), but others we actually win. Achieving something with a group of strangers is way more gratifying than catching 17 Voltorbs in a row.

Pokémon Go makes a lot of money, which means it’s not going anywhere. Niantic could break the game down, turn every Pokémon into Ditto and people would still Shellder out hundreds of real world dollars for pokécoins.

Nostalgia-fueled freemium apps will one day take over the world, shaping the minds of our youth into something malleable and squishy. In the next hundred years, Nintendo will become a country of millions of weaboos fanboys who become Mario’s constituents. Mario hats with eyeballs will be glues to our heads, controlling everything we do, from the apps we download to the games we play.

Will you be joining Nintendo’s new world order or will you join the Sega resistance? Tell us in the comments.