Pokémon Pocket made more than Pokémon Go in its first year

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 30/10/2025

Pokémon TCG Pocket celebrates its one-year anniversary today (October 30th) and has become the most profitable Pokémon mobile game debut ever.

As reported by Pocketgamer, data firm AppMagic has estimated that Pokémon Pocket has made almost $1.3 billion (£988m) in profits.

This shockingly puts the TCG game’s first year above the 2016 phenomenon Pokémon Go, which made around $1bn (£760m) in year one.

The game received around 10m downloads in its first three days and recently reached the 150m download milestone.

Pokémon Pocket’s most time came in November 2024, earning around $229m (£174m) that month alone.

The game’s profits have since dropped significantly, with Pokémon Pocket making less than $50m (£38m) in September 2025.

Still, it was enough to beat Pokémon Go as Pocket has seemingly found a good monetisation system.

Players can pay to open more packs and a popular premium pass doubles players’ amount of daily packs to two.

The game just released its biggest expansion yet, the Pokémon Pocket Mega Rising update, with three packs and a lot of game improvements.

The update added Mega Evolutions to the game, a popular mechanic which also recently returned in the new Pokémon Legends Z-A game.

This refresh was needed because, as the drop in profits suggests, interest in the game has been slowing down.

Despite huge profits, DeNa have been slow to release updates and improvements for the game.

DeNa recently announced Pokémon Pocket players will have to wait until Summer 2026 for a simple, highly requested change.

More absurd statistics from the first year of Pokémon Pocket

As part of the game’s one-year anniversary, DeNa, Creatures Inc., and the Pokémon Company have released a celebratory video.

This video revealed a lot of ridiculous statistics, which show just how popular Pokémon Pocket has been.

As well as over 150m downloads, Pokémon Pocket has seen over 18bn packs opened.

This has led to over 111bn virtual Pokémon cards being collected in total.

And thanks to that, the playerbase has also made over 490m showcases of their favourite cards.

Despite the trade feature not being released for a while in the trading card game, over 96 million trades have been made in Pokémon Pocket.

And though Pokémon Pocket is a simplified version of the physical card game, the game has seen over 12bn battles.

The battles, trading, and Wonderpicks have led to over 6bn in-game ‘thanks’ being sent in the game too.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

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