Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Niantic, Niantic Labs, P25, pokemon, pokemon go

Niantic Releases Video Celebrating Five Years Of Pokémon GO

Niantic has released a new video celebrating five years of Pokémon GO and twenty-five years of Pokémon as a franchise. Let's take a look at this retrospective, celebratory video.

Niantic wrote in their press release:

In July 2016, Pokémon GO launched globally, bringing people to parks and neighborhoods in the real world to discover the joy of catching Pokémon. Trainers around the world have made invaluable connections with people and places over the years as they've collected, battled and traded Pokémon. Here are a few highlights:

More than 450 million friendships have been forged through Pokémon GO.

[The game] has been downloaded more than one billion times across 150 countries and territories.

Niantic Explorers have collectively walked over 38 billion kilometers, a number that's growing every day.

Today, Niantic and The Pokémon Company posted a video taking a look back at the game's first five years, with much of the content shared by [Trainers] themselves.

You can watch that video here. It features appearances from some well known trainers including JTGily, Billy from The Trainer Club, ZoëTwoDots, Mystic7, and many more. Beyond showing recognizable faces, it encapsulates into two minutes a great deal of what it felt like to play Pokémon GO when it first launched and what it still feels like to many now. There is a sense of excitement for real-world exploration and love of Pokémon in the video that gets me personally pumped to get out and play. Some of the adjustments to the game have, in my opinion, made it easy to get lazy with the game. Instead of going to Gyms for Raids, I remote, even when they're close. I'll throw on an Incense and skip a walk I'd intended to take. The truth is, though, almost all of my best memories playing Pokémon GO are from when I was getting out there in the world. While I love seeing Niantic keep the pandemic bonuses for players who need them, I'm equally excited to rediscover by choice what it felt like to play this game when I enjoyed it most.

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