Whether you like it or not, there’s no getting around the fact that Pokemon GO has become immensely popular in a fairly-scary short amount of time. We’ve seen crazes like this before, such as Angry Birds, Flappy Bird and of course, Candy Crush, but has Pokemon GO beaten all of their records and become popular in a shorter space of time? According to a little research from Sensor Tower, a mobile app research firm, it does look that way.
According to charts using data from Sensor Tower and put together by Forbes, Pokemon GO hit 7 Million downloads in just a week of it going live. This is impressive in its own right, but compared to the 1.9 Million and 2.1 Million downloads that Candy Crush Jelly Saga and Angry Birds 2 achieved, respectively, during the same 7-day period, it helps to show just how fast this climb to the top for Pokemon was. While a lot of the game focuses around Augmented Reality, which may or may not be off to a good start in general, it’s arguable that the Pokemon brand and its rich history is what’s caused this massive growth. After all, Pokemon was all the rage back in the 90’s and those same kids are now in their 20’s, walking around with their friends, playing Pokemon GO on their smartphones and getting high on nostalgia.
Just like any other high however, the party has to end at some point. Predictions are that Pokemon GO cannot keep up this meteoric growth, but it’s unlikely Pokemon GO is to simply disappear or fade away entirely. There is so much scope for improvement with the game, and there’s a pretty sizeable core base of Pokemon fans out there, and always has been, so while the party might come to end, there’s always going to people keeping it alive in some way or another. If Niantic can keep updating the game with new mechanics and more content, it’s likely they can keep some sort of hype surrounding the game going for a lot longer than most people will have first though.
