What went wrong with Pokémon Go? Three lessons from its plummeting player numbers
Just a few months ago Pokémon Go was showing brands how to use geolocation and gamification to deliver huge results in profit and customer engagement. So what happened? Mark Humphery-Jenner discusses in this cross-posting from The Conversation.
Pokémon Go is in rapid decline. Since launching in July and soaring in popularity, it had lost at least a third of its daily users by the middle of August.
By mid-September, daily revenues had fallen from US$16m per day to US$2m (excluding the 30% app store fee) and daily downloads had declined from a peak of 27 million to 700,000.
Of course, many mobile games – especially ones that trigger a worldwide craze – suffer declines in usage over time. Pokémon Go still generates significant revenues, but its precipitous decline has seen it labelled a fad and nicknamed “Pokémon Gone”.
This is a great assessment.
Pokemon Go was setup to keep people interested for a week or two. It never had any indication of getting better. The gap between new players and strongly held gyms created an even greater barrier for new players.
I would love to have known what their end game was. Just make hay, then accept a decline?
You’re over thinking it mate. Tell me a mainstream game that hasn’t gone through this cycle.
Nintendo themselves released a statement just after the game’s release to say the earnings it generated would be immaterial to their financial results.
Kinda says all you need to know about their plans and end-game I would have thought.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....SKCN10504G
Due to the business structure around Pokemon Go, Nintendo was never getting the significant share of revenue out of the title – that went to Niantic (owned by Google) and The Pokemon Company (only part-owned by Nintendo).
Some clear signs about how Pokemon Go would be treated can be seen in Niantic’s previous title Ingress – something with a strong launch but withering once people got past the initial interest. There was no long-term hook and Niantic seemed to treat Ingress more like a proof of concept rather than something available to the public.
I’m not sure the author has played Pokemon Go. I agree they left the recent changes too late but two crucial elements have helped make it more interesting. First the buddy Pokemon. Often the frustration for the game is that a player is missing one or two Candy to power-up hard to find Pokemon (such as a Snorlax), especially when they have jumped up a level. Second, sometimes it can be hard to find the final few Pokemon to achieve an evolve and a buddy can help those final few Candy.
In the earlier iterations of the game there was no incentive to “train” in gym as you could only put one Pokemon in. Now you can put 6 through a gym to train which makes it much easier to increase the level of the gyms. We are now seeing far more level 10 gyms which also makes it more challenging to bring down a gym and change team.
This makes it easier to aggregate points and collect coins.
The improvements are making the game better but still there are some issues that make it hard once you reach the higher levels – for instance, the jump from reaching level 30 and 31 is from 350,000 to 500,000 points which is huge.
It may be shrinking but still there is a large and loyal user base that I have observed across Southern Europe, the UK and North and Southern Africa.
Definitely all valid points. A decline was inevitable – it peaked so damn quick with so many people downloading it simply to see what the fad was about, but crikey, they mortally messed up with the lack of communication in the beginning.
How slow they are to fix bugs, and re-implement tracking (if it ever is coming back at all) is only continuing to ruin it.
I’m sure it’s not too late for Niantic to sort it out and win some fans back. The game has a ton of potential, but the longer they are silent about what’s coming, the harder it will be.
One note though – there already is a buddy Pokemon system implemented, and has been there for quite a few weeks now.
You have to worry about the state of the English language when even an associate professor misuses a term such as “begs the question”.
You have to worry about the state of the English language when even an associate professor misuses a term like “begs the question”…
Also, Pokemon Go had almost no Network Effects.
I was just about to settle down and read this story. Then I came across the term “actionable take aways” and, well, as a matter of moral principle, I felt I should stop.
Perhaps the next story can distinctively harness some exceptional innovation while collaboratively morphing inter-mandated interfaces and appropriately enable some dynamic core competencies?