When Pokemon GO first launched back in the Summer, it was pretty clear to see that nobody really expected the the game to take off in quite the way that it did. After all, it was a sight to behold places like Central Park be overrun by players of a fairly rudimentary game, which hasn’t really evolved much since its original launch. What was perhaps more surprising than anything else is just how willing people playing the game were to hand over their money for in-app purchases. The idea of regularly spending money inside of a game like Pokemon GO is certainly not a new concept, but this was one title that caught a lot of the industry off guard. Thanks to new reports from App Annie, it’s now been revealed that Pokemon GO was the first mobile game to hit $600 Million in in-game revenue.
The latest from App Annie shows that Pokemon GO generated Niantic Labs, the Pokemon Company and Nintendo $600 Million of revenue in just 90 days. To put that into perspective, the below graph shows that even the infamous Clash of Clans took 500+ days to get to that figure. Even Candy Crush Saga took more than 200 days to reach the same sort of threshold, which makes this announcement a pretty big deal. This isn’t the only interesting data that App Annie has unearthed surrounding Pokemon GO, as it took up 45 percent of time spent in the Top 20 games on Android during Q3 2016, while the other 19 games had to divide the remaining 55 percent among themselves. Considering that Pokemon GO also turned a lot of players that didn’t usually play games like this into players, that 45 percent becomes even more impressive.
What the future holds for Pokemon GO is unclear, but with updates that have now made the game useless while traveling in a vehicle – regardless of whether or not you’re driving – the company might be driving more users away from the game. With new features and new Pokemon promised in future updates however, it’s likely that Niantic will be able to claw some of these fleeing players back, as well as keep hold of a sizable and loyal fan base.
