If it's been months or even more than a year since you last thought about going for a walk to hatch some eggs or recycle some Pokémon for additional candies, then you wouldn't be the only one. There's been a big drop off in Pokémon Go's player base since its original surge in 2016, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still have a sizeable audience. In fact, at the most recent -- and arguably most well-received -- Pokémon Go event, more than 3.4 billion Pokémon were caught around the world.
Niantic was clearly caught by surprise by the success of its augmented reality game when it launched and it has showed its lack of experience with a huge player base over the past year and a half with botched patches, long-waits for feature releases and bungled live-events. But now it appears to be catching on to how things should go and it's working well for it.
Niantic threw down the gauntlet to its player base and charged them with catching three billion Pokémon in one week in order to unlock previously East-Asia exclusive monster, Farfetch'd worldwide. They did so a day early, completing the goal ahead of schedule and beyond the goal itself. Farfetch'd is now globally available, but more importantly and telling, Pokémon Go still appears to be insanely popular with millions of global players.
Some of that interest was triggered by the usual reward roll outs: double XP, extra candies, new Pokémon and hints of additional legendaries, but it appears as if this global community event really helped bring players back to the game in a manner that we haven't seen since the early patch days of the game.
It could be that this is a one-off, but Eurogamer certainly sees this as Niantic finally figuring itself and its own game out and may mean that Pokémon Go remains relevant longer than many would have given it credit for.
Are you still playing and did you participate in last week's extravaganza?