Niantic's hugely popular mobile game, Pokemon GO, is in the middle of celebrating its third anniversary which game players new in-game events to take part in like the current Jump-Start and Special Research activity that's currently active. Even thought he game may not quite be the global force it once was when it first launched in 2016, the game has been quite lucrative for Niantic, allowing the company to branch out into other major franchises like Harry Potter. Despite being free-to-play, the game has managed to pull in a massive amount of money, outpacing all other games except one.

According to SensorTower, Pokemon GO is currently on track to surpass $3 billion dollars grossed in 2019 across both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This total puts the game squarely in second place as one of the most successful mobile games from a Western developer, beating out other massively popular games like Candy Crush Saga and Clash Royale. In their first three years, Clash Royale generated $2.3 billion while Candy Crush Saga managed to pull in an impressive $1.86 billion.

However, in order to claim the number one position, Pokemon GO has some work to do. In its first three years, Clash of Clans from the developer Supercell was able to generate $3.15 billion in revenue.

In terms of revenue breakdown for Pokemon GO, the top three spending countries have not changed all that much. Players from the United States represented about 35% of the game's gross revenue at $928 million spent in game. Japan came in second at $779 million and Germany coming in third at $159 million. In terms of Android versus iOS, 54% of total spending came from Google Play which represents $1.43 billion with the remaining $1.22 billion coming from iPhone and iPad users.

In an effort to generate a bit more excitement and revenue, Niantic is looking to the powerful and very rare Pokemon, Mewtwo. Its armored variant is now available to battle in five-star raids until July 31 at 1pm PDT. Even though it's a special armored version, the fight is expected to play out exactly like fights against the normal version, which means players should find counter Pokemon for psychic types including bug, dark, and ghost types.

Pokemon GO is available now on iOS and Android devices.

Source: SensorTower