Pokemon Go surpassed its best-ever annual revenue with two months of 2020 still to go, as Covid-19 (coronavirus) lockdowns apparently failed to stem the popularity of the location-based Niantic title.

In the ten months to end-October, Sensor Tower reported the game generated revenue of $1 billion, up 11 per cent on full year 2019 and 30 per cent more than the comparable period of the year.

Sensor Tower mobile insights strategist for EMEA Craig Chapple explained despite the game encouraging users to roam outdoors, the title remained popular by deploying “stay-at-home” features.

And, of course, not all nations were locked down concurrently, allowing some users to continue to play outdoors, he noted, adding the title’s “resilience should be a lesson to all developers in the space”.

The revenue-to-date in 2020 brings the total reaped by Pokemon Go since its launch in 2016 to $4.2 billion, with cumulative downloads of around 600 million.