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Pokemon Go loses over 15M active users in a month – report
Augmented reality game “Pokémon Go” has lost over 15 million of its daily active users—about a third of its player numbers at the height of its popularity, according to research by a US security brokerage firm.
When “Pokémon Go” was launched on July 6, it was met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Millions of people all over the world were stepping out of their homes to catch the colorful critters on their mobile devices. It wasn’t long, however, before people started completing their Pokémon collections—an achievement some believed would eventually prove the game’s death knell.
Whether or not you think Pokémon Go’s days are numbered, Axiom Capital Management’s data, which was published by Bloomberg, shows that the game lost over 15 million active players in just a single month since it hit its peak popularity in mid July.
Furthermore, “Pokémon Go” engagement has fallen over 50 percent. Online searches for the term “augmented reality” have also dropped since the game’s release.
It’s only natural for the enthusiasm for a game to drop with the passage of time. However, factors that could be contributing to Pokémon Go’s hasty decline in popularity include the aforementioned Pokémon collection completion, and the fact that leveling up eventually slows to a crawl as your avatar progresses in experience.
Just recently, Pokémon Go was the most popular free mobile game, so much so that people were playing it for an estimated 43 minutes a day. This meant that they were spending more time on it than on other mobile apps such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The dissipation of the Pokémon Go phenomenon should probably come as a relief to rival mobile developers and investors in competing mobile apps.
“Given the rapid rise in usage of the ‘Pokémon Go’ app since the launch in July, investors have been concerned that this new user experience has been detracting from time spent on other mobile focused apps," stated senior analyst Victor Anthony in Axiom's report. “The declining trends should assuage investor concerns about the impact of ‘Pokémon Go’ on time spent on the above named companies.”
The analyst believes that should these declines endure, it would bring into question the viability of not only “Pokémon Go,” but augmented reality as a gaming device, as well.
“The Google Trends data is already showing declining interest in augmented reality, whereas interest in virtual reality remains high,” he added.
What developer Niantic will do to maintain fan interest in the game remains to be seen, but so far, we know that they’re working hard on new features. Most recently, an update finally gave the three Pokémon Trainers something to do other than stand and look pretty; they now give players advice about the Pokémon they’ve caught, which should help them when it comes to making decisions about which particular creatures to bring into battle.
Also, if Niantic is going to stay true to the series’ lore, we should also expect the emergence of hundreds of other Pokémon. The current total Pokémon count is at a whopping 721, so that should give players more reason to keep catching the elusive monsters.
Read GMA News Online's review of “Pokémon Go” here. — BM, GMA News
