About a week ago, Niantic hosted Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago, a big event that brought some big new additions to the mobile game: Generation 1 legendary birds Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, as well as Pokémon Gold and Silver‘s Lugia. In many respects, unfortunately, the event was a bit of a disaster. Due to the huge turnout, a lot of players faced significant technical issues, to the point that Niantic issued an official apology and offered refunds.
There was some good that come from the event, however. The birds are catchable in the game now (Articuno and Lugia are, at least), much to the delight of the Pokémon GO-ing public. In fact, as it was just reported, the game had its highest grossing day since its launch period ( via IGN).
Data from Sensor Tower shows that July 23rd was the highest grossing day for the game post-launch (since October 1, 2016). Players spent $5.8 million that day, the largest sum since October 28, 2016. This put Pokémon GO back on top of the highest grossing iOS apps list in 23 countries, and in the U.S. for the first time since April.
Zapdos and Moltres are expected to become available in the game in the next few weeks, so perhaps Niantic can sustain this momentum for a bit. The question is how they’ll try to keep up their recent run of success when they’re out of legendary Pokémon to add. What next steps would you like to see the game take? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Featured image: The Pokémon Company
