Pokémon Go marks 10 years with Times Square Mewtwo raid
Nearly 2,000 players gathered in New York as Scopely used a Mewtwo battle to show how far the mobile game’s live events have come.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Pokémon Go celebrated its 10th anniversary in New York with a large-scale Mewtwo raid that brought nearly 2,000 players into Times Square, according to The Verge. The event mattered for the game’s makers because it recreated the kind of communal battle Niantic teased before the mobile game launched.
The Verge reported that the Thursday evening event briefly darkened Times Square before its billboards lit up with an escaped Mewtwo that Mega Evolved. Many of the players present were Pokémon Go influencers, and the crowd joined a special in-person battle centered on the legendary Pokémon.
Niantic first showed Pokémon Go in a 2015 trailer, a year before the game’s public debut. The trailer presented a mobile game built around walking through real places to find and catch Pokémon, while also showing crowds working together against rare, powerful monsters.
That vision arrived before raids were part of Pokémon Go. The early pitch still made clear that Niantic wanted legendary Pokémon encounters to feel like community events rather than routine mobile-game tasks, according to The Verge.
Scopely casts the event as a milestone
Scopely, which acquired Niantic’s games business in 2025, described the Times Square raid as a way to fulfill the ambition behind the original trailer. Michael Steranka, Scopely’s vice president of product, said in a company statement that bringing more than 1,000 people into one local raid once seemed out of reach.
Steranka said the Times Square gathering was a fitting way to mark a decade of play with the Pokémon Go community. The event also contrasted with Pokémon Go’s first major in-person festival in Chicago in 2017, where network strain and software problems disrupted plans for thousands of attendees, according to The Verge.
Niantic later accepted responsibility for the Chicago problems, The Verge reported. Steranka, who joined Niantic that year to help coordinate the event, said during a press briefing that he believed at the time he should have lost his job over the failure.
Steranka said the team responded by studying what had gone wrong and how to fix it, rather than assigning blame, according to The Verge. Since then, in-person and community-focused events have become central to Pokémon Go’s growth.
A long-running hit
Scopely told Wired that Pokémon Go has been downloaded more than 800 million times since launch. The company also said the game generated $1 billion in 2025.
Niantic struggled to reproduce that success with other augmented reality games built around known franchises, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Catan: World Explorers, both of which were shut down, according to The Verge. Pokémon Go has stayed popular even though its core play has not changed dramatically, The Verge reported.
Ed Wu, Scopely’s games president, credited the game’s longevity to its focus on player communities. In a company statement, Wu said Pokémon Go grew from a prompt to explore nearby places into a game that brings players together across cities, countries and cultures.
Scopely views Pokémon Go as a long-term game because the Pokémon franchise keeps adding creatures and because new players, including younger ones, continue to arrive with each mainline Pokémon release, according to The Verge. Wu did not give specific future features, but said Scopely is examining how different age groups bring one another into Pokémon and how gyms can support local communities.
The next global Pokémon Go Fest is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, with more Mewtwo encounters and cooperative challenges, according to The Verge. A new set of mainline Pokémon games is also expected next year.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.