Shows you just how much pent up demand there was for Nintendo to release games on mobile.
Getting a huge first week download count is a lot easier when you have literally decades of brand recognition. Being a free download certainly didn't hurt either.
It remains to be seen what the customer retention numbers look like. I saw some absolutely insane projections earlier this week about how Apple and Nintendo were going to make billions off of Pokemon Go. I don't see how they're going to sustain the current game as it gets fairly grindy and there isn't much to do once you've caught them all. Maybe some compelling new features will be added to keep players from getting bored? Direct peer to peer battles and possibly trading for example.
When someone told me that Pokemon Go was exploding, I looked into it, and got really excited about its concept. People getting outside, interacting though a long-loved game, using real landmarks to denote checkpoints, playing a localized "king of the hill" type minigame. The architecture behind it and it really feels like it's using bleeding edge VR push us into a more social and fun world.
That said, I also feel like it's equally the biggest missed opportunity to date. Usually, I just see players walking, heads down, not talking. It was downright eerie when I was downtown one Tuesday night at midnight, and it was dead quiet despite ~60 Pokemon players meandering about. They should have introduced PvP earlier (hopefully it's around the corner!), and better yet, make it so you get more exp for battling people you haven't battled before. Spur people into social interaction!
You know that one mobile "space pilot" game? The one where everyone's phone displays different elements of a fictional spacecraft, with buttons labeled "Power Overdrive" and knobs and levers to pull with crazy names? And players get instructions they need to shout to other players, like "Whoever has the Neutrino Ray, set it to 4!"
Basically, the game forces one big fun social interaction by requiring players to exchange information to stay alive.
How could this work with Pokemon Go? I don't know. Currently the only social exchanges are "There's a Blastoise over here!" (which is pretty darn cool). But maybe more could be done. Some type of puzzle where one person in an area is designated the "Puzzle leader," and gets to rely information to other people...
I think they've solved the battle mechanics very elegantly by avoiding direct PvP, likely on purpose, to prevent too many real-world confrontations escalating.
My experience (being on a college campus, however dead it may be during the summer) has been the opposite. People who otherwise wouldn't talk to each other are openly walking up to each other to talk about Pokemon Go.
A coworker of mine and his girlfriend have also started hanging out (as in, indoors and double dating by not playing Pokemon together) with another couple they met while hunting for Pokemon.
I'm confused by the title. Is PoGo the first app to reach x downloads in the first week of release, or is it the most downloaded app of all time, just one week after release? Slow internet won't let me view the article.
"While the game was only available in a few countries at the time, the app has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history."
This game has become a victim of its own success. Niantic has be strangely silent about bugs and server outages. I foresee a massive drop in interest soon.
I keep seeing these comments foretelling the "inevitable" doomsday from the development community. This is a surprising sentiment. What Pokemon Go has shown, regardless of its future success, is a new ceiling for mobile app virality.
Also notable is that people always cite the issues as the reason for failure. But these issues have affected the app since day 0. Pokemon Go is having this success despite its technical flaws. Further evidence that building the right product trumps building a flawless product.
I say flip the narrative. What Pokemon Go has shown is that a product that fills a burning desire can achieve what seems like unprecedented success levels, quickly. The app doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be something people want.
Where I live, the public parks are full of crowds of people and have Pokemon Go signs telling them that the park closes at 11pm and must leave. The rail stations have Pokemon Go signs warning travelers to pay attention when crossing the tracks. Business are throwing Pokemon Go-themed events to bring in customers. Bars are offering Pokemon Go themed drinks with discounts for players.
I was downtown when there was a four-hour outage of the servers. I saw on my server monitor that the login server came back online. I logged in immediately. From my location I could see about two dozen Pokemon stops. None of them had lures. Within five minutes, half of them had lures.
Only a handful of immature children on the internet care about the minor bugs and server issues. There will be no drop in interest any time soon.
So in a thread about how massively successful this game is, we are all predicting the inevitable doom? Why? Of course one day it will die out, but so will literally every other game. So far these things have not stood in the way.
In most of the world it is not even available, it will continue burning for a couple of months and if they add PvP, trading and other good stuff that the gameboy games had they will ensure indefinite success.
I think they'll be in trouble if a competitor makes an AR game based on a similarly popular IP that is more smoothed out. I'm not sure feasible that is in the near future, but it could happen.
The bugs and lack of features aren't going to be a big problem for some people because for them, it's as much a "meeting random people" app as it is a game. It's an ice breaker. Fighting over the gym with people from the neighborhood. Doesn't need to be complicated.
75% of the time I launch the game, I'm confronted with an error that I couldn't be logged in.
Maybe the game is so popular because it feels like a rare resource. It's so hard to get into the game that when you do you have to play it as long as possible until the servers go down again.
The numbers will absolutely drop. I mean, there's definitely a ton of content that can be added like earning gym badges, Gen 2-6 Pokemon (which people don't really care about), trading, PvP, etc. But, at the end of the day I doubt Niantic has the time/resources for that. The execution has been rather poor.
Still though there's a demand for Nintendo software on mobile. They just need to really to execute. They're really lucky we're tolerating these huge bugs (nearby Pokemon and frozen Pokeball after catch still outstanding).
Why is their execution poor? They've broken every record in usage and growth. Designing a back-end to expect and support that level of usage out the gate would have been poor execution.
Servers crashing and people still tolerating it is strong evidence they made something people want, which in my mind is excellent execution. I guarantee if they made a crappy game they will not have server problems or loud bug complaints.
I think that the biggest feature that Pokemon Go will add, that will hopefully come soon, is the ability to broadcast your position.
This is something that I wish ingress had done. The game is a multiplayer game, there is no doubt about that. I'd love to be able to open map map, see that some of my friends are over playing at $foo location, and then go meet them there.
I built a chat app for pokemon go that allows people within a 5 mile radius to chat anonymously. It also has a crowd sourced pokemon spawn map where people can broadcast and located pokemons within their vicinity.
Once I can get Apple to stop rejecting it I'll post a link.
Ingress had at least a proxy for that - an in-game chat with distance-filtering, i.e. you could limit messages you see to sources closer than X kilometers. As for third-party tools, someone somehow made a player tracker once; I think it used changes in portal owners to narrow down your location.
Clash Royale would be my guess. Recent release, IP carries over from a very popular existing game, but it's not just a sequel. Also had great word of mouth from the geobeta.
A game can't have everything the first day of launch. They released this to test it against the market. Now that it is a success, changes will come to increase retention and purchases. Now the next biggest events will be promoted also with Pokemon things to do in the place, like "get this rare pokemon on the Vegas Electronic Event. The game is a real success and the mechanics described by Richard Bartle proved that people loves to collect, it is the Diogenes syndrome but in mobile version.
The dropoff in interest has already started. I pretty much stopped playing last week. I got to level 14 and the amount of grinding required was just ridiculous (the amount of XP you earn per action does not increase as you level up meanwhile the XP required to level up goes up exponentially). The bugginess of the game really did not help.
The dropoff in interest has already, objectively speaking, started[0]. It's currently (as of July 22) 66% of its peak (per Google Trends). In my personal experience, interest on my college campus has already subsided. It's not completely dead, mind you, but the hype is over.
Have I missed something, or is this game just about walking around collecting pokemons with eggs? Is there anything else to it that I missed? The interface isn't illuminating.
The game is an old school LAN party. You spend time face to face with your friends, shouting out to each other and having a good time. It gets you outside and after playing for a while you forget that it is imaginary. When one person sees a good Pokemon they will tell you where it is, not by showing a phone screen but by pointing to a location nearby.
Yes, it is just about walking around and collecting Pokemon.
> is this game just about walking around collecting pokemons with eggs?
Pretty much.
You can also battle to control gyms, but the rewards are pitiful and the combat system / pokemon types are so poorly implemented that it's basically a waste of time. Where I live, all the gyms change teams every minute or so.
So you collect pokemon, level up, and pray that Niantic will add some better features soon (trading, PvP, ladder system, more rewards for gyms, etc.). But there's no indication that they'll do so...
Honestly, I have exactly the same question. I saw dozen articles that talk about the thing but noone mentions exactly how it works / what happens after you catch a pokemon.
These numbers are probably the reason why niantic was totally caught by surprise and have these massive server issues.
I really don't like to see the app offline every time I have to go for a longer walk, but hey, I take it easy and wait for either niantiv upgrading their ressources or the userbase to shrink, which shouldn't take too long imo.
[+] [-] jandrese|9 years ago|reply
Getting a huge first week download count is a lot easier when you have literally decades of brand recognition. Being a free download certainly didn't hurt either.
It remains to be seen what the customer retention numbers look like. I saw some absolutely insane projections earlier this week about how Apple and Nintendo were going to make billions off of Pokemon Go. I don't see how they're going to sustain the current game as it gets fairly grindy and there isn't much to do once you've caught them all. Maybe some compelling new features will be added to keep players from getting bored? Direct peer to peer battles and possibly trading for example.
[+] [-] MattyRad|9 years ago|reply
That said, I also feel like it's equally the biggest missed opportunity to date. Usually, I just see players walking, heads down, not talking. It was downright eerie when I was downtown one Tuesday night at midnight, and it was dead quiet despite ~60 Pokemon players meandering about. They should have introduced PvP earlier (hopefully it's around the corner!), and better yet, make it so you get more exp for battling people you haven't battled before. Spur people into social interaction!
[+] [-] 2bitencryption|9 years ago|reply
Basically, the game forces one big fun social interaction by requiring players to exchange information to stay alive.
How could this work with Pokemon Go? I don't know. Currently the only social exchanges are "There's a Blastoise over here!" (which is pretty darn cool). But maybe more could be done. Some type of puzzle where one person in an area is designated the "Puzzle leader," and gets to rely information to other people...
[+] [-] 0x0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevindong|9 years ago|reply
A coworker of mine and his girlfriend have also started hanging out (as in, indoors and double dating by not playing Pokemon together) with another couple they met while hunting for Pokemon.
[+] [-] chipperyman573|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _asummers|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puddintane|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdfologist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] longsangstan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cag_ii|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlarocco|9 years ago|reply
Something like "Apple says Pokemon Go is the most downloaded app ever, after just one week," would have been much more clear, IMO.
[+] [-] curiousgal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liquidise|9 years ago|reply
Also notable is that people always cite the issues as the reason for failure. But these issues have affected the app since day 0. Pokemon Go is having this success despite its technical flaws. Further evidence that building the right product trumps building a flawless product.
I say flip the narrative. What Pokemon Go has shown is that a product that fills a burning desire can achieve what seems like unprecedented success levels, quickly. The app doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be something people want.
[+] [-] hyperpallium|9 years ago|reply
Niantic has experience in longevity for this type of game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) ... Nintendo does too.
Though I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the first week meeting years of pent up demand.
[+] [-] aiyodev|9 years ago|reply
I was downtown when there was a four-hour outage of the servers. I saw on my server monitor that the login server came back online. I logged in immediately. From my location I could see about two dozen Pokemon stops. None of them had lures. Within five minutes, half of them had lures.
Only a handful of immature children on the internet care about the minor bugs and server issues. There will be no drop in interest any time soon.
[+] [-] vlunkr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leojg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nperez|9 years ago|reply
The bugs and lack of features aren't going to be a big problem for some people because for them, it's as much a "meeting random people" app as it is a game. It's an ice breaker. Fighting over the gym with people from the neighborhood. Doesn't need to be complicated.
[+] [-] Osiris|9 years ago|reply
Maybe the game is so popular because it feels like a rare resource. It's so hard to get into the game that when you do you have to play it as long as possible until the servers go down again.
[+] [-] hogwash|9 years ago|reply
http://unanimous.ai/augmented-reality-then-and-now/
[+] [-] kin|9 years ago|reply
Still though there's a demand for Nintendo software on mobile. They just need to really to execute. They're really lucky we're tolerating these huge bugs (nearby Pokemon and frozen Pokeball after catch still outstanding).
[+] [-] jhchen|9 years ago|reply
Servers crashing and people still tolerating it is strong evidence they made something people want, which in my mind is excellent execution. I guarantee if they made a crappy game they will not have server problems or loud bug complaints.
[+] [-] dabeeeenster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blhack|9 years ago|reply
This is something that I wish ingress had done. The game is a multiplayer game, there is no doubt about that. I'd love to be able to open map map, see that some of my friends are over playing at $foo location, and then go meet them there.
[+] [-] rezashirazian|9 years ago|reply
Once I can get Apple to stop rejecting it I'll post a link.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smaili|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BryantD|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrese|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thaxll|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] B1FF_PSUVM|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] samstr|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] meerita|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevindong|9 years ago|reply
The dropoff in interest has already, objectively speaking, started[0]. It's currently (as of July 22) 66% of its peak (per Google Trends). In my personal experience, interest on my college campus has already subsided. It's not completely dead, mind you, but the hype is over.
[0]: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pokemon%20go&date=to...
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cerium|9 years ago|reply
Yes, it is just about walking around and collecting Pokemon.
[+] [-] gthtjtkt|9 years ago|reply
Pretty much.
You can also battle to control gyms, but the rewards are pitiful and the combat system / pokemon types are so poorly implemented that it's basically a waste of time. Where I live, all the gyms change teams every minute or so.
So you collect pokemon, level up, and pray that Niantic will add some better features soon (trading, PvP, ladder system, more rewards for gyms, etc.). But there's no indication that they'll do so...
[+] [-] aram|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicky0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Bonsailinse|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mp3geek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xlayn|9 years ago|reply