What was initially outed as an April Fool’s joke, has turned out to be one of the largest success in the gaming industry. Nintendo’s augmented reality game, Pokemon Go, based on the anime series from Japan, has become a rage amongst the people in the US.
According to recent reports, the Android and iOS game has already exceeded the Twitter daily active count and has been installed on nearly 6% of all Android users in the US. As of now the game is available in the US, Australia and New Zealand only, however the game developers are planning to launch it in Europe, South America and a few Asian countries, hopefully India as well.
What’s all the noise about?
If you watch Pokemon or have watched it earlier, you would know what it feels like to enact the same in real life. As kids, it would be fun to watch the trainers catch Pokemon and battle them for awards and ultimate championships. If I were to tell you that you can do the same now, except through augmented reality, wouldn’t you get excited about it?
This is exactly what has taken the US by storm and made people go out of their houses into the wild. There have been reports of accidents, fatigue, robberies and museums putting up signs to discourage users from playing Pokemon Go on the streets.
However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop a bunch of people from catching a Pokemon at 3AM in the night. Exactly like in the anime series, users can throw (virtually) Poke balls to catch Pokemon, train them and fight them in championships.
The game developers have very smartly placed exclusive Pokémon’s in unknown locations, making people explore locations they have never been to before.
Mind-blowing Pokemon Go Stats
Within 2 days of launch, the app was already installed on 5.2% of all Android devices in the US. Within a day of launch itself, it had surpassed the number of Tinder installs on all Android devices in the US.
Over 60% of the users who have the app installed on their phones, are using it daily, which is already higher than Twitter in terms of daily active user count. Considering it is a game, and a very famous one at that, the average usage time is at around 45 mins, while the closest one, WhatsApp, only garners 30 mins.
This sudden rage also ended up increasing Nintendo’s stock price by 20%, never seen before in the last 30 years. The retention time of the app is also said to be extremely high when compared to other games. However, let’s wait for a few months once the rage dies down.
Can this fame sustain?
Do you remember flappy bird? It was a very simple game that rose to fame for its interesting gameplay, but failed to sustain as similar games launched on Android and iOS. Pokemon Go however has a lot going for it to become dormant in the coming months.
Firstly, there isn’t a game similar to this one out there, and cannot be, since Pokemon is Nintendo’s property. Secondly, flappy bird did not have much variation in it, whereas Pokemon Go is augmented reality, which has so many permutations and combinations that you can literally never run out of challenges.
Thirdly, the game has an emotional connect with the users, as the developers have brought to life what we wanted to do as kids. A combination of these make it a sure shot success and can propel it to higher levels.
While the game is unofficially available everywhere else, we strongly recommend not to download the .apk file available on the internet because of some security and privacy concerns.
Do watch out for more updates as Nintendo reveals its plans to launch the game outside of the US. We will be first one to let you know when the game launches officially in India
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