When Niantic dropped the first Pokémon Go trailer in 2015, it was laborious to know how a bunch of gamers may work collectively to catch a pokémon like Mewtwo. However this week on the recreation’s tenth anniversary occasion in New York Metropolis, Pokémon Go confirmed the world the way it’s finished. Virtually 2,000 gamers (lots of them Pokémon Go influencers) packed into Instances Sq. on Thursday night to take part in a particular battle. It was cool to see Instances Sq. briefly go darkish earlier than the billboards started lighting up, revealing an escaped Mewtwo Mega Evolving, and it was even wilder to see folks residing the fantasy depicted within the recreation’s first trailer.
Regardless that most individuals had by no means performed a cellular recreation like Pokémon Go when the sport debuted in 2016, the trailer made the overall concept straightforward sufficient to know. Gamers have been meant to exit into the world, and the sport would inform them the place they could be capable to discover wild, catchable monsters if they might get to a particular space quick sufficient. The trailer made gameplay seem to be it could possibly be a chill, solitary expertise, but it surely additionally featured wild photographs of crowds teaming as much as take down highly effective pokémon. Raids hadn’t been launched to the sport at that time, but it surely was clear that Niantic had plans to make issues like catching legendaries really feel particular.
In a press launch, Scopely — which acquired Niantic’s games business last year — VP of product Michael Steranka defined that the latest anniversary occasion was the corporate’s way of life as much as that first trailer. “Once we first dreamt what Pokémon GO would possibly change into a decade in the past, internet hosting greater than a thousand folks in a single, native raid battle was only a pipe dream,” Steranka wrote. “Seeing that imaginative and prescient change into a actuality in Instances Sq. was the proper solution to have a good time 10 years of enjoying along with our group.”
This newest in-person occasion was a far cry from the game’s first in 2017, when hundreds of gamers descended upon Chicago solely to search out their poké-plans scuttled by community overloads and software program points that Niantic took ultimately credit for. Steranka joined Niantic that very same yr to assist coordinate the disastrous Chicago occasion, and through a press briefing this week, he mentioned that — on the time — he thought that he “ought to have been fired” for a way issues performed out.
“I additionally rapidly found from this expertise that the Pokémon Go crew doesn’t level fingers,” Steranka mentioned. “As a substitute of looking for somebody in charge, everyone got here collectively, and we spun up an offsite in Seattle to be taught what went improper and the way to sort things.”
Doubling down on and increasing the scope of its in-person, community-focused occasions has been key to Pokémon Go’s exponential progress through the years. According to Scopely, over 800 million folks have downloaded Pokémon Go for the reason that recreation first launched, and the corporate raked in $1 billion from Go in 2025 alone. For years, Niantic struggled to replicate that kind of success with its different IP-focused augmented actuality video games, like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Catan: World Explorers. Pokémon Go’s continued recognition is considerably shocking contemplating how the core gameplay hasn’t actually modified all that a lot. However Scopely’s video games president, Ed Wu, attributes Pokémon Go’s endurance to the best way the corporate has put rather more emphasis on cultivating participant communities.
“What began as an invite to discover the world round you has change into one thing that brings gamers collectively throughout cities, nations, and cultures, from neighborhood meetups to celebrations that draw a whole lot of hundreds of individuals collectively,” Wu mentioned in a press assertion. “As we glance forward, our dedication stays unchanged: to maintain evolving the sport in ways in which flip on a regular basis locations into alternatives for discovery and connection.”
Scopely sees Pokémon Go as a endlessly recreation each due to the franchise’s ever-expanding roster of monsters and the truth that there are all the time going to be folks — particularly youthful ones — who’ve by no means performed earlier than. With every new mainline Pokémon recreation launch, a brand new technology of gamers arrives. Once I requested Wu how his crew plans to evolve Pokémon Go sooner or later, he didn’t go into specifics. However he mentioned that Scopely is wanting into capitalizing on the ways in which folks of various ages (e.g., kids and their mother and father) get each other into Pokémon and the way gyms can be utilized to foster communities.
This Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of thousands of individuals are in all probability going to be out and about collaborating in 2026’s world Pokémon Go Fest that may see the map gentle up with much more Mewtwo encounters and challenges that require gamers to work collectively. It’ll be the sport’s most formidable occasion but, however with a set of new mainline Pokémon titles dropping subsequent yr, Pokémon Go will nonetheless have room to develop.