Those of you who followed Apple’s iPhone event yesterday will know how John Hanke, CEO of Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs, greeted us on stage and said that the game had been downloaded more than 500 million times. While that’s a great milestone, what could make that look pale is the fact that Pokémon Go has now become the fastest mobile game to hit half a billion dollars in revenue.
The game has made it to this milestone in an unbelievable 63 days after its launch in July. The numbers come from market researcher App Annie. Further, the analytics firm says, that according to its projections, the game could hit the $1 billion mark by the end of this year.
But there’s a lot more the game creators are hoping to offer in the near future. Apparently, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are planning to launch the Pokémon Go Plus by September 16. This device will allow trainers to capture Pokémon without actually drawing out their smartphones. Another excellent development to look forward to is that the game is launching on the Apple Watch by the end of the year.
One key takeaway from Apple’s event? Gaming. Pokémon Go availability marks the first top 10 mobile game to come to the Watch.The game has now generated well over $500 million in worldwide customer spend across iOS and Google Play app Stores,
said Danielle Levitas, Senior VP of research and marketing communications at App Annie.
Pokemon’s latest platform expansion will have more game developers thinking wearables.
According to App Annie, Niantic has potential new sources of revenue through partnerships. Earlier, we saw McDonald’s Japan team up with the company to turn its outlets into PokéStops or gyms for Pokemon Trainers. Now, SoftBank is also becoming part of the league. Now, the company’s 3,700 stores will also become potential magnets for Pokemon Go players.
The new features are sure to keep the augmented reality based game’s head up in the market for a while. But it is almost inevitable that the growth will start slowing down and probably become negative in a few months time. Anyhow, the nitrous boost that the game got at the beginning of its launch might have just extended the life of the game in the market by a lot.
