Pokemon Go got 147 million people to walk outside and look at their phones at the same time. No product in history has done that. Not even the iPhone launch.
We reached $1 billion in revenue faster than any mobile game in history — seven months. Fortnite took 10 months. Candy Crush took two years. Location plus nostalgia is a powerful formula.
I made Google Earth. Then Google Maps. Then Pokemon Go. My career has been about getting people to explore the real world through technology. That thread has never changed.
Everyone asks why our other games haven't matched Pokemon Go. The answer is Pokemon. It's the most valuable media franchise in human history. You can't replicate that with any other IP.
The metaverse shouldn't be about trapping people in a virtual world. It should be about enriching the real world. We've been building the real-world metaverse since 2012 — we just didn't call it that.
Pokemon Go still generates $700 million a year, seven years after launch. People call us a one-hit wonder. Most companies would kill for one hit that prints $700 million annually.