Pokemon GO

Pokémon GO Review: Ten Years, New Owner, 3.6 Stars

The Walk Is the Game

Everything is tied to physical movement: creatures appear where you are, eggs hatch by distance covered, and gyms and raid battles sit on real landmarks that have to be reached on foot. That constraint is the whole design, and it is also the cost — continuous location access, a live connection and a battery that empties faster than any other game in this catalogue. Raids show why the crowd matters: a defender listed at 56,009 combat power against an attacker at 2,949 is not a fight one phone wins. Max Battles add a meter that fills through cooperative damage.

Events Became the Product

The calendar now drives the game more than the catching does. Community days, seasons and anniversaries arrive on a schedule — the current one is the tenth, badged Forever Forward — and the best-rewarded days are ticketed. The App Store lists event tickets at $4.99, evergreen tickets at $1.99 and finale passes at $14.99 and $19.99, alongside coin packs from $0.99 to $39.99. Mega Evolution and Team GO Rocket battles are the mechanical layers stacked onto the original loop, and both are tuned around those scheduled days rather than around ordinary play.

Scopely Owns It Now, and Play Rates It 3.6

In May 2025 Scopely completed a $3.5 billion purchase of Niantic's games division, taking this game along with Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, while Niantic's remaining mapping technology spun off as a separate company. What that means in practice is that a live-operations publisher now sets the event calendar. The Google Play average is 3.6 from 15.4 million reviews, remarkably low for a game with 500 million installs, against 4.0 from 652,000 ratings on Apple. The install is 443.3 MB with no advertising badge on either store.