Pokemon GO Lost 15 Million Daily Users Last Month

[Steven Bogos]

Pokemon GO Lost 15 Million Daily Users Last Month

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Is the Pokemon GO fad already starting to self-destruct?

Bloomberg [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/pokemon%20go?os=pokemon+go] suggests that it may already be in decline, as it's daily user base has dropped by 15 million users in the last month.

As you can see in the chart above, the daily user count peaked at around 45 million, and has since dropped all the way down to just 30 million.

Axiom Capital senior analyst Victor Anthony says that investors in companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat "have been concerned that this new user experience has been detracting from time spent on other mobile focused apps." With the downturn in Pokemon GO's mindshare, Anthony says investors can rest easy.

"The declining trends should assuage investor concerns about the impact of Pokemon GO on time spent on the above named companies," wrote Anthony. He said that if the decline in users continues, it could spell trouble not only for Pokemon GO but also augmented reality in general, adding that "interest in virtual reality remains high."

What do you guys think? Personally, despite an initial surge in playing, I haven't really touched the game very much at all in the last couple weeks. There's nothing like turning it on and seeing nothing but Weedles and Rattatas for miles to discourage me from playing...

Source: Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/these-charts-show-that-pokemon-go-is-already-in-decline]

Permalink

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I had to delete Pokemon Go from my phone, purely because of patchy wifi avliability and I have a plan with very limited data... Which I'm not going to waste on an app that constantly tries to mine my purse for pocket change I can't afford to give it anyways.

 

[The .50 Caliber Cow]

This is what happens when people actually play the fad game and learn its kinda shit. Not shit enough for the bandwagon to stop attracting new followers for quite some time but shit enough that eventually user retention is going to slide.

Did I mention the game is shit?


[sub]Moo! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE][/sub]

 

[Guffe]

My way of using the app hasn't really changed since it came along.
When I go somewhere, I start it up and walk with my phone in my hand, when it vibrates I check out what happens.
Went a few times on walks just for the game, but never actually went searching for anything, just playing as it goes, very casually.
When I acquire 120 different ones I think I'm starting to get done. I don't walk nearly enough to get the rare 10km pokemons and the starters final evolutions are a pain. I'm at 115 now and unless soemthing rare pops up in the wild, I have a few final evolutions I soon will get, but then it would require putting money on incubators and getting the 10km hatches to get to 130-140 different pokemons.
I think it's a bit of fun, but I was always in it for the collection of the mons, and not much else.

 

[witmanfade]

I'm not surprised by the decline at all. The game generated a lot of buzz, but after people like me tried it out, they figured out it wasn't for them. The game carries a huge amount of name recognition. I think it will stabilize at what would still be a fairly high number. The park by my house is still packed with people playing the game every day.

 

[Fappy]

Yeah, I have pretty much stopped playing it too. Anyone who doesn't either live in a major city or spoofs their GPS location has been left in the dust. Not really worthwhile anymore.

 

[Death Carr]

I stopped playing because if you don't live in a massively populated city then you have no chance of achieving anything

 

[JoJo]

For me, the constant loading issues are rapidly killing my interest in the game, half the time the game won't even load over a 4G connection, or stops picking anything up for no apparent reason. What makes this even more frustrating is that until the update at the beginning of August, the game ran like a dream on my phone. Since then it's been awful and my progress has ground to a halt.

 

[Saelune]

What do I think? I think mobile games are a plague. I also think investors are a plague who like to propagate other plagues.

That said, I am at the Elite Four in Pok?mon Yellow, and I just started Pok?mon Blue again. Thinking about going back to either SoulSilver or Platinum maybe.

 

[Jandau]

So, who would have thought that launching an unfinished game with most of its feature missing, then changing things around at random, all the while having next to no communication with your community would turn people off? I mean, a cool concept can only get you so far. That being said, Pokemon Go won't die, it's just shedding the most casual of the players. However, unless Niantic shapes up and gets its ass into gear, this will start to snowball...

 

[Messing]

This is what happens when people actually play the fad game and learn its kinda shit. Not shit enough for the bandwagon to stop attracting new followers for quite some time but shit enough that eventually user retention is going to slide.

Did I mention the game is shit?


[sub]Moo! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE][/sub]

You took me on a weird journey with that final link haha.

OT: I think the game just doesn't have an longevity to the features to last it more than the few months that it has already been out. I think that AR will take a few more years and improvements in battery life and widespread wifi-coverage to make the experience more viable. Though this has shown that there is definitely interest in AR out there.

It has also, most likely, not been helped by Niantic's miscommunication on all the issues that the game has.

 

[Kahani]

making a boatload of money for Nintendo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/167911-Pokemon-GO-Raises-Nintendo-Shares-25]

No it didn't. Increasing the price of shares being traded among third parties doesn't give any money to the company whose shares they are.

The game generated a lot of buzz, but after people like me tried it out, they figured out it wasn't for them.

Indeed, it's exactly what happens every time something is suddenly supposed to be the next big fad. This is a Pokemon game. Aside from the extra gimmick of having to walk around a bit, it's exactly the same collect/fight gameplay as all the others. People who already liked Pokemon are going to like this game as well, people who didn't care about it before aren't suddenly going to become dedicated fans. It's like expecting Psy to become an international superstar just because everyone briefly obsessed over one of his songs; the vast majority had no idea he was already an established artist and not a one-hit Youtube wonder, and they've never even heard of any of his other songs let along actually listened to them. Similarly, most of the people who have played Pokemon GO bandwagon had never played Pokemon before and never will again, they just jumped on the latest bandwagon, and will jump off again as quickly as they always do.

 

[Yopaz]

For me, the constant loading issues are rapidly killing my interest in the game, half the time the game won't even load over a 4G connection, or stops picking anything up for no apparent reason. What makes this even more frustrating is that until the update at the beginning of August, the game ran like a dream on my phone. Since then it's been awful and my progress has ground to a halt.

Out of curiosity, do you also get the GPS sending you back and forth after the update? I didn't have that happening before, but it does now. I even have to say "I'm a passenger" when I am sitting in my house...

OT: I'm not surprised. As a friend of mine says the game is good, but the app is crappy. For those of us who enjoy taking walks throughout the day it's actually a good companion. The game isn't exciting in any way, but it's motivation to walk just a little bit longer for some of us. Now unlike several of the people in this thread I have several PokeStops nearby (10 or 11 just by walking half a mile to where I take the train from every day and I pass several others over the course of a day) so that might be part of it. I don't doubt that the popularity will be short lived, especially with the coming of winter when you need touch screen compatible gloves in order to play in many countries, people going back to work and the end of the AAA game release drought (though many of the fans of those might not have been the target audience anyway).
Maybe if Niantic keeps some of their promises with an update to make the game better this will keep a little longer, but as of now it looks bleak.

 

[Harlemura]

The removal of tracking features and then shutting down the alternatives was bad enough, but the nail in the coffin for me was hatching a 10km egg and getting a Mr. Mime. Even if the whole catching Pokemon thing wore thin, hatching eggs would be a good incentive to at least keep the app open when I'm out and about.
But not if I'm going to love and nurture an egg for a whole 10 kilometres and get a freakin' Mr. Mime.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Article doesn't mention that this 15 million decline means that it still has a user base of 35 million, which is a 10th of the entire United States population, and more than 3 times the population of World of Warcraft.

Niantic isn't in trouble. They made enough money they never have to do anything again. The only way they could be fucked is if they pissed it all away like Farmville

 

[Scytail]

The removal of tracking features and then shutting down the alternatives was bad enough, but the nail in the coffin for me was hatching a 10km egg and getting a Mr. Mime. Even if the whole catching Pokemon thing wore thin, hatching eggs would be a good incentive to at least keep the app open when I'm out and about.
But not if I'm going to love and nurture an egg for a whole 10 kilometres and get a freakin' Mr. Mime.

Mr. Mime is one of the four region locked Pokemon that can only be caught in Europe and has to be hatched everywhere else. I could understand your complaint if you hatched an Eevee or Jynx out of a 10k egg.

 

[shrekfan246]

So, who would have thought that launching an unfinished game with most of its feature missing, then changing things around at random, all the while having next to no communication with your community would turn people off? I mean, a cool concept can only get you so far. That being said, Pokemon Go won't die, it's just shedding the most casual of the players. However, unless Niantic shapes up and gets its ass into gear, this will start to snowball...

Yeah, to me it seemed like most of the talking about Pokemon GO stopped after they had the updates that removed tracking and then apparently rejiggered encounter rates so nobody was actually finding anything interesting anymore. The fact that they still haven't fixed any of this actually surprises me, because they're basically killing their own game. I mean, yeah, it's still doing fine now, but they need to do something, or else it's just going to continue losing players as they get closer and closer to having all of the 'Mons they can actually feasibly get.

 

[Gorrath]

So, who would have thought that launching an unfinished game with most of its feature missing, then changing things around at random, all the while having next to no communication with your community would turn people off? I mean, a cool concept can only get you so far. That being said, Pokemon Go won't die, it's just shedding the most casual of the players. However, unless Niantic shapes up and gets its ass into gear, this will start to snowball...

Yeah, to me it seemed like most of the talking about Pokemon GO stopped after they had the updates that removed tracking and then apparently rejiggered encounter rates so nobody was actually finding anything interesting anymore. The fact that they still haven't fixed any of this actually surprises me, because they're basically killing their own game. I mean, yeah, it's still doing fine now, but they need to do something, or else it's just going to continue losing players as they get closer and closer to having all of the 'Mons they can actually feasibly get.

I agree. While I am still a big fan of the game and don't think it's shit like others seem to, removing the tracking feature, closing the alternatives (though there are some other new ones now that are open, I'd rather have a working function in the game) and not really improving the user experience at all, I'm finding less reasons to sign in. Part of that is simply not having much else to catch. I only have 78/150 in my dex but I've caught all the common ones that spawn in my area and everything else requires a dedicated day trip to go find. I still play and still enjoy getting the exercise and catching pokemon but they seriously need to roll out some improvements. Other than stability being far less of an issue now, the rest of the game feels less complete than it did when I started!

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Yeah, I have pretty much stopped playing it too. Anyone who doesn't either live in a major city or spoofs their GPS location has been left in the dust. Not really worthwhile anymore.

The irony for me is that I live in a massive, major city full of pokestops and the like, but the damn game doesn't work right on my phone and there's about a 1 in 50 chance of it actually registering my location properly, let alone picking up on me walking.

I'd probably play the game if it actually worked for me since I like the walking/catching thing (I played the hell out of the Pokewalkers back during the Heart Gold/Soul Silver days) but... yeah, kinda stymied by the fact it's held together by the programming equivalent of shoestrings, which doesn't mesh well with my phone.

Ah well, at least all the memes surrounding the Go Gym Leaders are surprisingly funny.

 

[Makabriel]

The removal of tracking features and then shutting down the alternatives was bad enough, but the nail in the coffin for me was hatching a 10km egg and getting a Mr. Mime. Even if the whole catching Pokemon thing wore thin, hatching eggs would be a good incentive to at least keep the app open when I'm out and about.
But not if I'm going to love and nurture an egg for a whole 10 kilometres and get a freakin' Mr. Mime.

Mr. Mime is one of the four region locked Pokemon that can only be caught in Europe and has to be hatched everywhere else. I could understand your complaint if you hatched an Eevee or Jynx out of a 10k egg.

Yeah, I was about to rant at them myself. Must be nice to be so annoyed at getting a region locked pokemon!