Mega Evolutions have proven unpopular with Pokemon Go trainers

Paul Cotton

Mega Evolution was much hyped before finally being added to Pokemon Go but some curious statistics have revealed just how unpopular it actually is.

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The concept of Mega Evolution was first introduced in generation 6. Interestingly this was just less than three years before Pokemon Go released.

However, it took more than three years of Pokemon Go’s existence before it finally came to the mobile game. Its addition was a heavily promoted event with the expectation that trainers would be thrilled to have the ability to Mega Evolve their ‘mons.

Mega Charizard Pokemon Go
Mega Charizard X (and Y) are one of several Mega Evolutions now in Pokemon Go…

24% of trainers have never used Mega Evolution

The excitement was seemingly there shortly before and after it released but these interesting results suggests otherwise. One Pokemon Go player, carllyq, conducted a poll asking “How many times have you Mega Evolved?”

5,300 responded and the results were as follows:

  • 0 times – 24%
  • 1 to 2 times – 58%
  • 3 to 8 times – 16%
  • 9 to 20 times – 2%
  • 21 to 50 times – 0.1%
  • 50 or more times – 0.1%

The key takeaways from this are nearly a quarter of Pokemon Go trainers have never before bothered to Mega Evolve one of their Pokemon. This is made all the more surprising considering the poll was conducted on the Silph Road Reddit page, a place where a more hardcore contingent of trainers congregate.

The majority of trainers have used Mega Evolution once or twice. More than 80% have done it twice or less.

If Niantic wanted trainers to use the feature frequently then their plan didn’t work. Approximately 1 in 50 respondents have used it more than 9 times.

Now, it should be noted that a lot of trainers don’t play Pokemon Go for the battling element which essentially makes Mega Evolution irrelevant to them. On top of that performing a Mega Evolution isn’t a cheap and quick task. It requires Mega Energy which is primarily harvested from specific Raid Battles.

Nevertheless, it is fascinating that such a hugely touted addition Pokemon Go, with genuine excitement behind it, looks to be an after-thought now. One reason for this could be many trainers considered the implementation of Mega Evolution to have many problems.

We’ll have to wait and see whether any changes for it materialize over time. As of now though, Mega Evolution isn’t something too many trainers worry about.

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