{"id":3559,"date":"2026-07-10T20:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2026-07-10T20:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:20:18","slug":"pokemon-go-10th-anniversary-mewtwo-nyc-go-fest-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=3559","title":{"rendered":"A decade later, Pok\u00e9mon Go finally made good on its original promise"},"content":{"rendered":"


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When Niantic dropped the first Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>trailer<\/a> in 2015, it was hard to grasp how a bunch of players could work together to catch a pok\u00e9mon like Mewtwo. But this week at the game\u2019s 10th anniversary event in New York City, Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>showed the world how it\u2019s done. Almost 2,000 players (many of them Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>influencers) packed into Times Square on Thursday evening to participate in a special battle. It was cool to see Times Square briefly go dark before the billboards began lighting up, revealing an escaped Mewtwo<\/a> Mega Evolving, and it was even wilder to see people living the fantasy depicted in the game\u2019s first trailer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even though most people had never played a mobile game like Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>when the game debuted in 2016, the trailer made the general idea easy enough to understand. Players were meant to go out into the world, and the game would tell them where they might be able to find wild, catchable monsters if they could get to a specific area fast enough. The trailer made gameplay seem like it could be a chill, solitary experience, but it also featured wild shots of crowds teaming up to take down powerful pok\u00e9mon. Raids hadn\u2019t been introduced to the game at that point, but it was clear that Niantic had plans to make things like catching legendaries feel special.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a press release, Scopely \u2014 which acquired Niantic\u2019s games business last year<\/a> \u2014 VP of product Michael Steranka explained that the recent anniversary event was the company\u2019s way of living up to that first trailer. \u201cWhen we first dreamt what Pok\u00e9mon GO might become a decade ago, hosting more than a thousand people in a single, local raid battle was just a pipe dream,\u201d Steranka wrote. \u201cSeeing that vision become a reality in Times Square was the perfect way to celebrate 10 years of playing together with our community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This latest in-person event was a far cry from the game\u2019s first in 2017<\/a>, when thousands of players descended upon Chicago only to find their pok\u00e9-plans scuttled by network overloads and software issues that Niantic took ultimately credit for<\/a>. Steranka joined Niantic that same year to help coordinate the disastrous Chicago event, and during a press briefing this week, he said that \u2014 at the time \u2014 he thought that he \u201cshould have been fired\u201d for how things played out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI also quickly discovered from this experience that the Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>team does not point fingers,\u201d Steranka said. \u201cInstead of trying to find someone to blame, everybody came together, and we spun up an offsite in Seattle to learn what went wrong and how to fix things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Doubling down on and expanding the scope of its in-person, community-focused events has been key to Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em>\u2019s exponential growth over the years. According to Scopely<\/a>, over 800 million people have downloaded Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>since the game first launched, and the company raked in $1 billion from Go<\/em> in 2025 alone. For years, Niantic struggled to replicate that kind of success<\/a> with its other IP-focused augmented reality games, like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite<\/em><\/a> and Catan: World Explorers<\/em><\/a>. Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em>\u2019s continued popularity is somewhat surprising considering how the core gameplay hasn\u2019t really changed all that much. But Scopely\u2019s games president, Ed Wu, attributes Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em>\u2019s staying power to the way the company has put much more emphasis on cultivating player communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat started as an invitation to explore the world around you has become something that brings players together across cities, countries, and cultures, from neighborhood meetups to celebrations that draw hundreds of thousands of people together,\u201d Wu said in a press statement. \u201cAs we look ahead, our commitment remains unchanged: to keep evolving the game in ways that turn everyday places into opportunities for discovery and connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Scopely sees Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>as a forever game both because of the franchise\u2019s ever-expanding roster of monsters and the fact that there are always going to be people \u2014 especially younger ones \u2014 who have never played before. With each new mainline Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> game launch, a new generation of players arrives. When I asked Wu how his team plans to evolve Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>in the future, he didn\u2019t go into specifics. But he said that Scopely is looking into capitalizing on the ways that people of different ages (e.g., children and their parents) get one another into Pok\u00e9mon <\/em>and how gyms can be used to foster communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This Saturday and Sunday, millions of people are probably going to be out and about participating in 2026\u2019s global Pok\u00e9mon Go Fest that will see the map light up with even more Mewtwo encounters and challenges that require players to work together. It\u2019ll be the game\u2019s most ambitious event yet, but with a set of new mainline Pok\u00e9mon <\/em>titles<\/a> dropping next year, Pok\u00e9mon Go <\/em>will still have room to grow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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