Pokemon Go Returns to Top Spot on App Store Over Holidays

Pokemon Go got a nice present over the holiday season.

Apple recently announced that Pokemon Go returned to the top spot of their App Store on December 21st, capping off a solid but not groundbreaking year for the popular mobile game. Apple credited Pokemon Go's rise on their sales charts to the game's recently added AR+ feature, which utilized Apple's boosted augmented reality technology.

While the new AR+ feature got a lot of publicity, Pokemon Go released it at the same time as their new holiday event, which added 20 new Pokemon to the game and saw a massive rise in Pokemon spawns around the world.

Pokemon Go also got a boost in the Google Play app store, where it rose to the #2 spot thanks to the holiday event.

Pokemon Go has briefly made appearances on the Apple App Store "Top Grossing" list throughout 2017, although not at the same rate as it did in 2016, where it remained on top for months. Typically, Pokemon Go gets a boost when it either offers discounted sales in its in-game app store or during major events that bring back lapsed players to the game.

In a recent interview with FT.com, John Hanke noted that Pokemon Go revenue was still strong, but hadn't reached its 2016 heights. "Revenues [in 2017] were not as high as they were in 2016 for the year but they were very strong," Hanke said. Later in the interview, he compared Pokemon Go's 2017 performance as "obtaining a stable orbit" after the rocket launch that was 2016.