Earlier this year, when Pokemon GO was finally, officially let loose on both Android and iOS, it’s pretty safe to say that nobody thought it would be as popular as it was throughout much of the Summer. Sure, games like these often come and go, reaching high levels of interaction, and then calming down afterwards, but the way that Pokemon GO took the whole world by storm during the Summer of 2016 was unlike anything else we’ve seen before. For Niantic, the Pokemon Company as well as Nintendo, the game has proven lucrative. With the more people playing the game, the more people need to spend real money in-game on item top-ups and upgrades. The Summer however, is over and so too, is the honeymoon period for Pokemon GO. According to new data, the game has lost as much as 79 percent of its paying players, and yet still manages to make more money than most other games.
This new data comes from Slice Intelligence, which looked at data over the Summer, and found that since its peak during the middle of July and now, Pokemon GO has lost as much as 79 percent of paying players since that peak figure. This would be cause for concern for the majority of mobile app developers, but for Niantic, the company behind the game itself, there’s little to worry about. That’s because, according to data from Slice Intelligence, Pokemon GO managed to scoop up 28.4 percent of all USD transactions inside of games made throughout August, a period of decline for the game. To put this in perspective, second place went to the ever-popular Candy Crush Saga, which only took home 4.5 percent of all USD revenue made in-game. These are impressive figures, despite the ongoing calls of Pokemon GO being dead and forgotten. In fact, these figures are having a knock-on effect for the Pokemon franchise as a whole, with Pokemon merchandise sales going “through the roof” during the months of July and August.
It’s important to remember that this data comes from just one source, Slice Intelligence, and that the firm in question uses e-receipts from over 4 Million online shoppers. As such, this data might not be 100% correct, but it’s pretty clear that a large portion of the Pokemon GO userbase has left the Summer behind, with seemingly better things to go with their time. Whether or not Pokemon GO will bounce back throughout the Fall, the promise of big and meaningful upgrades looms large.
