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Pokémon GO surpasses $6 billion in global lifetime player spending

mazi

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Pokémon GO from Niantic has surpassed $6 billion in global lifetime player spending across the App Store and Google Play, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data shows.

The title has been one of the world’s most lucrative mobile games since its launch back in 2016, when it became an instant global phenomenon. In 2021, it was the No. 7 revenue generating mobile game worldwide, accumulating $1.3 billion, while in Q1 2022 Pokémon GO ranked No. 11 for player spending, picking up $198.2 million. According to Sensor Tower Game Intelligence, it remained by far the top grossing Geolocation AR title in the world during the last quarter.

Pokemon GO took just under six years to hit the $6 billion milestone, putting it in an exclusive club. Other mobile titles that have surpassed the figure include PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings, both from Tencent, Candy Crush Saga from King, and Clash of Clans from Supercell.
The United States ranks as the No. 1 country for lifetime player spending in Pokémon GO, generating $2.2 billion, or 36.6 percent of total revenue. Japan ranks No. 2 with 32.6 percent, while Germany ranks No. 3 with 5.2 percent.

Google Play accounts for the majority of player spending, accumulating $3.1 billion, or 52.3 percent, while the App Store represents $2.8 billion of revenue, or 47.7 percent.

Pokémon GO has generated 678 million downloads worldwide to date. The U.S. ranks No. 1 with 123.2 million installs, or 18.2 percent of the total. Brazil ranks No. 2, while India ranks No. 3.

Google Play represents the majority of downloads, accumulating 517.2 million installs to date, or 76.3 percent of the total. The App Store, meanwhile, has generated 160.8 million downloads, or 23.7 percent.


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shame nintendo couldn't make their games work, but they didn't try hard enough (to many's relief anyway)
 
Dragon Quest Walk? Never heard of it yet it's making nearly half as much as Pokemon Go.
It's Japan-exclusive. It released during Summer 2020. From what I've heard, it is more of a JRPG spin on the Pokemon Go formula with all that at-home stuff Go implemented for the pandemic built in from the get go. On both storefronts, it's regularly in the Top 5 Grossing, above Pokemon Go usually
 
I play daily Pokemon go and so does my wife, it's extremly popular game here even with the problems we face here in Mexico too play it.
 
It is crazy how Nintendo, TPC got a giant success from Pokemon GO and yet they are unable to replicate this level of success for their other mobile game effort there. Outside FEH. I don't think there is much to brag there.
 
It is crazy how Nintendo, TPC got a giant success from Pokemon GO and yet they are unable to replicate this level of success for their other mobile game effort there. Outside FEH. I don't think there is much to brag there.
They clearly don't really care about mobile games. The investors forced them to do it during the wii u days but now that they're making money from the console market the investors can f off.
 
It is crazy how Nintendo, TPC got a giant success from Pokemon GO and yet they are unable to replicate this level of success for their other mobile game effort there. Outside FEH. I don't think there is much to brag there.

It’s because of Pokémon.
 
They clearly don't really care about mobile games. The investors forced them to do it during the wii u days but now that they're making money from the console market the investors can f off.

Which for such huge company, is such dumb moves.

For a company with such gigantic IP in gaming, not having a big mobile game that uses those IP to its maximum to bring income is such big miss opportunities.

Many other gaming companies which much smaller Ip's have been using their Ip's as mobile game to earn money which they can reuse in the future for bigger and better console games and vice versa.

Having a tunnel vision on just dedicated gaming as 90% of their incomes when their merchandising/multi media IP growth has not even bring the result they wanted is just recipe for disaster if their next console launch is not as hot as Switch. It means they will have 0 other business to save their earnings.

It’s because of Pokémon.

There is more failure on Pokemon mobile game that its success lol.
 
Which for such huge company, is such dumb moves.

For a company with such gigantic IP in gaming, not having a big mobile game that uses those IP to its maximum to bring income is such big miss opportunities.

Many other gaming companies which much smaller Ip's have been using their Ip's as mobile game to earn money which they can reuse in the future for bigger and better console games and vice versa.

Having a tunnel vision on just dedicated gaming as 90% of their incomes when their merchandising/multi media IP growth has not even bring the result they wanted is just recipe for disaster if their next console launch is not as hot as Switch. It means they will have 0 other business to save their earnings.



There is more failure on Pokemon mobile game that its success lol.

You are correct. Nintendo is completely braindead with regards to mobile. They purposefully throttled Mario Kart Tour's success by delaying multiplayer. They handcuffed Cyberagent on Dragalia Lost with regards to spending... I'm not really sure what happened with Dr. Mario. The Zelda game that Mochizuki made up in his head (or did he?) never happened. I'm not really sure how they blew the Pokemon game with Tencent. The whole thing is joke.
 
Nintendo wants to make their mobile games still ‘Nintendo’ games and that means they follow a lot of philosophies which just go against what works and gives the most money in the mobile market, there is a reason why the most successful Nintendo mobile games are the ones with the least Nintendo involvement (Pokemon Go and FEH). I think that the trend of Nintendo outsourcing IP to mobile makers (Cygames,DeNa and Niantic) will keep happening and Nintendo direct involvement other than brand management will be quite lower going forward
 
Averaging $1 billion in revenue per year is a lot. That is kind of like releasing a Pokemon game per year on average (which they are kind of doing now lol.) Like a console Pokemon game that sells 20m copies makes 20m * $60 = $1.2 billion in revenue. So Pokemon Go, at first, seems like it is just as good as releasing a console Pokemon game every year. However, the truth is that Pokemon Go is actually not nearly as good, business wise, as console Pokemon.

The most important thing that console Pokemon games do is that they sell hardware. They drive up the install base. That larger install base ends up increasing the software sales of other titles too. I think about the Wii U and 3DS. Both had horrible launches. However, the 3DS eventually had Pokemon games and the Wii U did not. Actually, 3 out of the top 5 3DS games are Pokemon titles, with the other 2 titles being Mario Kart and 2D Mario. The Wii U had Mario Kart and 2D Mario. The big difference is Pokemon. So you get 76m 3DS shipped or 13.6m Wii U shipped. That's a huge difference. Or you can compare Mario Kart 7 with Mario Kart 8. MK7 ships 19m while MK8 ships 8.5m on Wii U. That bigger install base is selling more software and that is just on one title. The main value of console Pokemon is that it generates a bigger install base, and the bigger install base buys more software in general.

So Pokemon Go is like planting a really big tree, but console Pokemon is like planting a forest. Console Pokemon has a much bigger impact than it might seem at first.
 
Nintendo wants to make their mobile games still ‘Nintendo’ games and that means they follow a lot of philosophies which just go against what works and gives the most money in the mobile market, there is a reason why the most successful Nintendo mobile games are the ones with the least Nintendo involvement (Pokemon Go and FEH). I think that the trend of Nintendo outsourcing IP to mobile makers (Cygames,DeNa and Niantic) will keep happening and Nintendo direct involvement other than brand management will be quite lower going forward

In regards to FEH, Nintendo is as involved as much as they usually are for Fire Emblem titles. It's just that the FE series is perfect for mobile. The gameplay was easily refactored to bite sized, speedy but tactical play with depth, the character growth and customization mechanics give players opportunities (not a lot but it's better than zero) to use their favorites even 5 years into the game in the face of some nasty powercreep, and more importantly (and unfortunately), having a large cast of characters means ample ammo to feed the gacha monetization model.

The sad thing is that as highly as I've spoke of this game, it's halfbaked in that Intelligent Systems puts just barely above a modicum of effort into the storyline which would be a prime opportunity to get people acquainted with and invested in characters of FE titles they haven't played. There's an ocean's width of improvement despite being one of Ninty's top mobile games.

So comparing to FE to Mario, it's no wonder why FEH outperforms Super Mario Run by *orders of magnitude. Mario is a simplistic platformer game. I'm no game designer but FE is much more focused in terms of mechanics and style that you could derive material to build a unique game around. At a first glance I don't see the potential a platformer Mario has beyond its brand name to make an impactful mobile game that would make waves on the market. Not to say it's impossible for Nintendo, but it's not going to come as easy as Fire Emblem.
 
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Is Pikmin Bloom considered as a failure ?
Probably.

They just changed the rate that you plant flowers to force players to buy expansions (that, unlike Pokémon GO, you can not buy with coins, but real money instead).

It is awful right now and I will not spend anymore.
 
Nintendo is console gaming focused. That’s why their next console won’t fail. They make more consistent money from that avenue. Other companies need mobile successes because that’s all they really have. Nintendo doesn’t. They just use mobile to advertise their mainline console IPs and to bring in some extra cash.
 
Averaging $1 billion in revenue per year is a lot. That is kind of like releasing a Pokemon game per year on average (which they are kind of doing now lol.) Like a console Pokemon game that sells 20m copies makes 20m * $60 = $1.2 billion in revenue. So Pokemon Go, at first, seems like it is just as good as releasing a console Pokemon game every year. However, the truth is that Pokemon Go is actually not nearly as good, business wise, as console Pokemon.

The most important thing that console Pokemon games do is that they sell hardware. They drive up the install base. That larger install base ends up increasing the software sales of other titles too. I think about the Wii U and 3DS. Both had horrible launches. However, the 3DS eventually had Pokemon games and the Wii U did not. Actually, 3 out of the top 5 3DS games are Pokemon titles, with the other 2 titles being Mario Kart and 2D Mario. The Wii U had Mario Kart and 2D Mario. The big difference is Pokemon. So you get 76m 3DS shipped or 13.6m Wii U shipped. That's a huge difference. Or you can compare Mario Kart 7 with Mario Kart 8. MK7 ships 19m while MK8 ships 8.5m on Wii U. That bigger install base is selling more software and that is just on one title. The main value of console Pokemon is that it generates a bigger install base, and the bigger install base buys more software in general.

So Pokemon Go is like planting a really big tree, but console Pokemon is like planting a forest. Console Pokemon has a much bigger impact than it might seem at first.
Yeah, and Pokemon Go is a trojan horse, in 2016 pokemon mainline go up because of Pokemon Go.
Nintendo tries to use the smartphone games to make people jump into the console realm.
 
Nintendo is console gaming focused. That’s why their next console won’t fail. They make more consistent money from that avenue. Other companies need mobile successes because that’s all they really have. Nintendo doesn’t. They just use mobile to advertise their mainline console IPs and to bring in some extra cash.
Nintendo is making a huge push to become also a multimedia company in the future, console gaming is a really unstable space and having secundary revenue streams like mobile gaming or multimedia ventures should help Nintendo financial stability.
 
Very true, but they will never do it at the expense of their traditional console business. The multimedia push is another avenue for them to get extra money and promote their console line. Since they don’t support two different hardware lines anymore, they will use this multimedia line to help keep them afloat if some trouble were to come. Although I don’t think they will truly ever pull a Wii U again.

Let’s see how the Mario Movie does. I’m sure the next 3D/2D Mario will follow in its footsteps (if the movie is a success) soon after.

Edit: I meant to quote you Blue Monty lol.
 
Nintendo is console gaming focused. That’s why their next console won’t fail. They make more consistent money from that avenue. Other companies need mobile successes because that’s all they really have. Nintendo doesn’t. They just use mobile to advertise their mainline console IPs and to bring in some extra cash.
I think that it is a lack of interest.

Games like Nintendogs or Streepass (and its games) would work very well on mobile.
 
Hit gold with Pokemon Go but haven't been able to replicate it with a different game; I think they should go a more experimental route but than again I have not tried any of their other games. Go was one of the few mobile games I tried it failed to really make a lasting impression despite the initial good impression. Guess I'm not the target demographic for these types of experiences.
I still believe in games like Go finding a niche, but maybe Niantic isn't the company to do it. Still with Pokemon Go still generating so much money they have the opportunity to try new things, hope they actually do.
 
Nintendo is making a huge push to become also a multimedia company in the future, console gaming is a really unstable space and having secundary revenue streams like mobile gaming or multimedia ventures should help Nintendo financial stability.
Mobile is just as unstable.
 
companies just tie themselves to Niantic because "they're the guys that made Pokemon Go"
Specially NBA. They want to try every media possible. But Niantic is building a whole environment for other devs to use.



This is very ambitious and could secure their future.

 
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