Last weekend, Pokémon GO celebrated its third anniversary. So, what exactly has it accomplished in this amount of time? According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data, the game has now grossed an estimated total of $2.65 billion worldwide. This covers transactions across the App Store and Google Play.

It makes GO one of the popular western-made smartphone games to-date. Excluding China, Niantic’s game has surpassed both Candy Crush Saga and Clash Royale in the same amount of time. Clash of Clans still holds the top spot, grossing an estimated amount of $3.14 billion.

In terms of spending habits, players in the United States take the lead – making up around 35 percent of gross revenue (approx $928 million). Japan takes out second and is responsible for 29 percent of in-game spending (approx $779 million), and Germany is in third, accounting for 6 percent (approx $159 million).

Google Play is where most GO-related transactions take place and makes up 54 percent of player spending (approx $1.43 billion). The rest is from Apple users ($1.22 billion).

In 2019 alone, GO has grossed $395 million worldwide. This figure is up by 19 percent compared to the first half of 2018. On average, the player base spends $2.4 million within the game each day. Crunching the numbers, that’s about $5 per user split across 521 million downloads. Sensor Tower says the augmented reality mobile game is expected to surpass the $3 billion mark by the end of 2019.

Have you spent any money in Pokémon GO? Are you still playing it after three years? Leave a comment below.

In today’s Pokémon Direct it was announced that Pokémon Sword and Shield is headed to Switch on 15th November in both Europe and North America. This will be the first new generation Pokémon series to land on the Switch – Generation 8, to be precise.

We got our first glimpse of brand-spanking new Pokémon, including the two legendary wolf-looking chaps known as Zacian (the one with the sword in his mouth) and Zamazenta (the one with a shield for a face). With the game now inked in for 15th November, you can pre-order the game today to ensure you don’t miss out on securing a physical copy. Below we’ve brought together some of the deals across both sides of the pond. Here we go…

Pre-Order Pokémon Sword and Shield in the USA

The major four US retailers have got their pre-order pages up. If you are a Best Buy member you can get $10 reward credit for pre-ordering one of the Pokemon games, which is nice.

Please note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links. If you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale which helps support the site. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

Pre-Order Pokémon Sword and Shield in the UK

Here are our preferred retailers in the UK to pick up Pokémon Sword and Shield from. The steelbook options look particularly tasty here, and offer slightly more value than the standard releases.

Let us know which new Pokémon caught your eye and if you’ll be slamming down a pre-order for Pokémon Sword or Shield (or both in that nice-lookin’ Double Pack) with a comment below.

Click Here!

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PlayStation Xbox Live Battle.net

Newsbrief: Nintendo’s paid Switch membership has surpassed 10 million subscribers worldwide, a milestone announced alongside talk of Nintendo’s plans for emerging technology and other topics at a recent Q&A with shareholders.

Last we heard of Nintendo Switch Online, the service had amassed 9.8 million subscribers worldwide. That last milestone came a little over two months back, so around 2 million subscribers have signed up for the service in that small amount of time.

It is worth noting that three-month-long subscriptions to Nintendo Switch Online (up to one year’s worth) are being given away as a perk to Twitch Prime members through January 2020, and that ongoing giveaway has likely given the service’s numbers a boost. Without the promotion, Nintendo Switch Online typically retails for $19.99 for a year, or $7.99 for three months.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Here are just some of the many, many positions being advertised right now. If you’re a recruiter looking for talent, you can also post jobs here.

Location: Los Angeles, California

N3TWORK builds fun, engaging, free to play games for iOS and Android. We are looking for talented senior game server engineers to join our small, focused team of experienced veterans to build scalable game servers.

Location: Bellevue, Washington

Here at Sucker Punch we’re hard at work on Ghost of Tsushima, and we’re looking for an experienced manager for our QA Team. You’ll be responsible for the entire Quality Assurance process, from the strategic planning to final verification, in order to help Sucker Punch ship a best-in-class AAA game for the PlayStation console.

Sucker Punch is focused on maintaining a collaborative and healthy work environment, and QA is an integral part of our team. If you’ve got something to say about the game, you’re expected to walk across the office and say it. You’re not going to have to fit your feedback into the comments field of a bug report. Quality Assurance is not only about fixing bugs, it is also about player experience, immersive storytelling, and having fun playing the game. We recognize QA as being a key aspect of taking Ghost of Tsushima to its full potential.

Location: San Jose, California

Cold Iron is seeking an experienced Sr. World Builder to join us in creating a shooter set in the Alien universe for consoles and PC! Are you excellent at designing spaces that are as pleasing to look at as they are to play through? Do you revel in bridging the gap between art and design, making the content and pacing of the game more enjoyable through layout with strong artistic sensibilities?

Here’s the most important one: Do you do it all for the game? Because you know that your talents are needed to make sure that even the best development teams get an awesome experience out the door?

Awesome. Come join our creative, collaborative studio where you’ll own the product management responsibilities for a tight, integrated team of game developers.

Location: Los Angeles, California

As a User Interface Artist, you will be responsible for the design & creation of new UI screens, dialogs and HUD. Your role will be focused on developing optimal layout designs that are both functionally engaging and visually dynamic. You will work closely with Game Design in visually interpreting feature requirements and UX, whilst also coordinating with development to ensure correct technical implementation. The ideal candidate would be someone with excellent graphic design skills and previous UI experience.

Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

New World Interactive is looking for a Community Manager to Create, edit and publish content for the company’s blog and all other official social media channels, Manage and engage social media community as it exists across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and other networks, Create and present regular reporting to internal teams on community engagement and social media metrics, and more as part of its team.

A new game from a brand-new publisher, pushing new boundaries with an old genre, and finding home on an especially well established platform: It’s no exaggeration to say it’s a genuine honour for us here at Studio V – the aforementioned fresh-faced publisher in your midst – to present our latest project on the pages of Xbox Wire. For all fans of narrative focused thrillers, say hello to Dry Drowning.

Taking place in the fictional north European city of Nova Polemos, we like to describe Dry Drowning as a ‘psychological investigative visual novel’ set in 2066. By following the story of Mordred Foley – an unscrupulous private detective haunted by his dark past – you will be immersed in a series of macabre serial killings inspired by ancient Greek myths.

Alongside companion Hera Kairis, it’ll be your task to unearth the truth in a hostile world seemingly out to set you back at every turn. The only tools in your arsenal are Foley’s knack for piecing together clues and slicing through people’s lies, with Dry Drowning drawing riddles aplenty and minigames laced with mystery into view along the way. It all plays out in what’s an intentionally dark and dystopian view of the near future, with play layered throughout with a dynamic soundtrack featuring more than 50 tracks and an admittedly peculiar and (in our view) awesome art style.

A story well told

This is no run-of-the-mill adventure, however. With Dry Drowning we have set out with the express aim of rejuvenating the visual novel genre, telling an extremely compelling and mature story filled with heavy moral choices and more than 150 story branches and three distinctly different endings. In short, we want this to be a game shaped by you, the player.

Tracking down the assassin brings with it some rather personal challenges for Foley, whose sense of morality is tested over and over again. It’s a setup we think will force you, the player, to consider some rather tricky questions of your own: Could you use your friends as bait to catch the crazed killer, for example? Or would you tamper with a crime scene in order to suit your investigation and ensure justice prevails, or leave things as they are and risk the culprit never being caught?

The choices don’t stop there, however. In the opening hours of the game, Dry Drowning hands you the opportunity to take down an entire corrupt political class, naturally having a massive impact on the world around you in play. Doing so means losing some characters right from the get go, while others may never turn up further down the line. Indeed, this decision fundamentally alters entire chapters. It can even make solving the case can be easier or harder, all depending on some specific actions.

Art, music and inspiration

As part of this drive to place the story front and centre in Dry Drowning, we also decided to mix Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future with the kind of atmosphere more akin to thriller movies and TV series, such as “Se7en” and “True Detective.” Games have naturally been an inspiration as well, with narrative-led titles like L.A. Noire serving as obvious ports of call, as well as games that employ a system of branching paths dependent on the choices made by you, like Life Is Strange or Telltale’s enviable line-up.

It’s a combination of influences that, along with the game’s artwork, soundtrack and gameplay, creates an oppressive setting for a society not so different from the one we’re living in right now. Just as in real life, racism, sexism, immigration, and political extremism all have a role to play in the world of Dry Drowning. In order to survive in this climate and, of course, solve the case, you’ll have to gather clues and find more about the characters that are involved. Some of them may lie, and you’ll know precisely who they are thanks to the game’s ‘Living Nightmare’ system.

For some mysterious reason (later revealed to you in play), Foley is able to tell if someone is lying to him by simply looking at their face. A mask will entirely shroud their features when the lie is told. Presenting clues, however, will rip that shroud from their face, though making mistakes may lead you to a premature end…

It’s this intense and almost infinite sense of edginess that helps ensure each and every chapter, each and every moment of Dry Drowning leaves you both uneasy and eager in equal measure. That’s all we can reveal right now but, rest assured, we can’t wait to show you more. Get ready to dive into the darkness of Dry Drowning on Xbox One in 2020.

Canadian developer 13AM Games has announced its third game, Dawn of the Monsters. This title follows on from Double Cross (2019) and Runbow (2015).

It’s described as a couch co-op “brawling action” game that takes up to four players on a worldwide tour of destruction. Players select from an all-new cast of kaiju and must work together to defeat the “Nephilim” – a horde of monsters destroying the planet.

There’ll be four unique worlds to unlock, The Maw and fully destructible environments. The game features “beautiful” 2.5 graphics and combat inspired by classic action and fighting game genres.

This new game from 13AM will be officially revealed on 12th July, during the opening ceremony of Chicago’s G-Fest XXVI – the world’s largest kaiju convention. Those in attendance will be able to get a look at an exclusive trailer, featuring the first publicly-seen footage of the game.

According to the PR, the game is currently expected to arrive in 2020 and platforms will be announced at a later date. In the meantime, check out the development screenshots below:

Would you be interested in playing a game like this on the Switch? Have you played 13AM’s previous titles? Tell us below.