The phenomenon that is known as Pokemon Go has yet to come to a complete halt. In fact, in the latest announcement made by developer Niantic Labs, we now know that the worldwide figure of Pokemon Go downloads stand at 650 million -- which is a cool 150 million more than what was last reported in September last year. This particular figure was shared over at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In fact, Pokemon Go is considered to be the top downloaded app on iTunes in the year 2016, which goes to show how big of a game this was -- and still is.
Interesting Pokemon Go statistics
Trivia collectors would no doubt be interested to figure out other statistics that deal with Pokemon Go, where among them include the number of miles walked by people who continue to search for Pokemon of their choice. A whopping 5.4 billion miles was traversed by humanity as a whole, which is more or less the distance to Pluto -- nearly, anyways. This does not take into account those cheats who do not do any walking at all though, but we are sure that the sample size that Niantic Labs has to refer to should not skew the result too far in any way.
At the moment, Pokemon Go remains a free-to-play game which is available on two of the most popular mobile platforms in the smartphone world -- iOS and Android devices, not to mention the Apple Watch. How does a free to play game make money? I suppose one can classify Pokemon Go as a freemium title instead, as this game would earn money via in-game microtransactions. You know, if you would like to get more equipment or take the short cut by throwing real world money for virtual money and items, so that your character is able to be better off within the shortest time possible. Brilliant and yet mind boggling at the same time.
It also does help Niantic Labs’ cause that they continue to work on releasing new Pokemons from time to time, as well as introduce events that are related to the real world calendar such as Halloween last year and Valentine’s Day just in the middle of last month. In fact, there was a special addition of 80 more new creatures to the bestiary recently, while there is also an ongoing special event that celebrates Pokemon Day as this franchise is now 21 years old -- and adult!
How has your Pokemon Go experience been? Eventually, the game will taper off and die a natural death. In fact, one does wonder out of the 650 million downloads to date, how many people are still playing the game on a regular basis? Take World of Warcraft for instance. It was a pretty hot title when it was first released, and for some time, it did not look like it was going to abate in popularity. Now, just pockets of gamers are enjoying it (even if it still numbers in the millions), as the tastes of gamers change to move with the times.
