Pokemon Go is the latest gaming phenomenon to take the world by storm. The AR reality-based game that makes you get off your couch and walk around the city to catch Pokemons and complete your Pokedex has caused analysts to ponder over the phenomenon as well.
After breaking multiple records and bagging the top spot, it still doesn’t seem that this ‘pocket monster’ phenomenon is about to lose steam anytime soon. According to Business Intelligence agency App Annie, the gaming phenomenon is currently adding daily revenue of over $10 million on both iOS and Google Play combined. The study also reveals that Pokemon Go has had a largely addictive impact on the $36.9 billion mobile gaming industry.
But it also reveals that the game’s success hasn’t had a sustained and meaningful impact on the daily revenues of other popular games, including Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga on both iOS and Android. There was an initial dip in the daily revenue of the popular games after the launch of the AR-based game, but it climbed back to the previous level in a couple days.
The previously top-grossing games haven’t seen a major dip in daily revenues because that revenue comes from a minority of users who are engrossed in their multitude of games, as reported by App Annie. The frenzy caused by Pokemon Go, as reported before, had surpassed Twitter in DAUs and beat Facebook in daily user engagement, but current reports now suggest that it has not had any significant effect on the average time spent on other games or apps on iOS or Android.
The revenue dip could be attributed to the initial excitement and nostalgia for the game, which connects you to your childhood once again. Though the game has given app developers a blueprint for increasing engagement with users and opening up new revenue streams, but the game — still at a nascent stage — has failed to capture the true essence of the Pokemon world. The current game is all about roaming about the city, throwing pokeballs and catching the monsters and moving on to the next one. There is a serious lack of a fighting engine, where one could battle a wild Pokemon before catching it or battle another trainer in the streets.
Pokemon Go has, however, changed the mindset of the gaming industry and you can understand the importance and vastness of this phenomenon by seeing developers building apps and platforms around the core Go ecosystem. Talking about the same, Sameer Singh in the report says that Pokemon Go has taught a couple important lessons to mobile game/app developers as a whole.
Lessons for app developers:
Firstly, the game has introduced and popularised the already-existing concept of augmented reality(AR) in a fun and engaging way. The game uses your phone’s GPS to direct you a particular location and then use the camera to project and catch the pocket monsters in the real world — which is pretty awesome for you, but weird for the people around!!
Secondly, walking in the real world and engaging with real-world location also open up avenues for new streams of revenue — very much alike the sponsored location partnership with McDonald’s. This would not only increase the foot-fall at a local business spot, but also bring more money to the developers as well. The developers would no longer have to bang their heads thinking of new and engaging in-app purchase packages and power-ups.
The launch of Pokemon go has ushered a new era in the gaming ecosystem by creating a model to close the online-to-offline (O2O) loop, as stated in the blog. You can now to see developers rush to bank upon the latest AR phenomenon by launching an upgraded and robust experience that users will, perhaps, enjoy more than Pokemon Go.
