Pokemon Go's Paying Population Drops By 79% -- Still Most Profitable Mobile App In The US (metro.co.uk) 91
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Metro: The world's obsession with Pokemon Go was clearly never going to last, but the incredible thing about its success is that although the paying population of the game is now down by 79% from its mid-July peak it's still easily the most profitable mobile app in the U.S.. According to analysts at Slice Intelligence, at its peak Pokemon Go inspired twice as many people as normal to spend money on mobile games, but that's now returned to normal. But Pokemon Go still accounts for 28% of all money spent on mobile games in America, bringing in six times more than nearest rival Candy Crush Saga. The obvious problem for Pokemon Go is that there's not really much gameplay to keep you coming back, and as winter approaches wandering around the countryside is going to lose some of its appeal somewhat. But there's a huge range of new features that could be added to the app, and just this week has seen the introduction of the buddy feature that lets you walk around and team-up with a particular Pokemon. There's also the delayed release of the Pokemon Go Plus Bluetooth device and the recent announcement of the Apple Watch app.
In other news ... "whales" still profitable. (Score:3, Interesting)
When an industry refers to their most profitable consumer to exploit as "whales" you know there is a problem with a lack of respect:
http://kotaku.com/who-are-the-... [kotaku.com]
Re:In other news ... "whales" still profitable. (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe the problem is on your end (Score:3)
When an industry refers to their most profitable consumer to exploit as "whales" you know there is a problem with a lack of respect
I'll bite - why do you hate whales? Whales are amazing creatures.
Re:In other news ... "whales" still profitable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhh, that term comes from gambling.. It's a well known term.
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1) That is a gambling term.
2) Not all whales are endangered. Many are still eaten regularly.
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Oh boy, don't start up the argument on point 2), there may be some Sea Shepherd shitheads lurking here.
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They stole the term from Vegas....
school started in USA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agree, probably there is a lot of people who got bored or the novelty of the game just passed of, but they never mention that school also started and makes that number look way bigger
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probably there is a lot of people who got bored or the novelty of the game just passed...
That's me. I'm an old gamer so Pokémon seemed like fun, it was free, and I could play while I walk the dog.
After a few weeks the novelty has worn off and I'm back to looking forward to Civ VI coming out.
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Hell, I dunno even where in the game TO buy things...I never looked.
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limited playtime
Don't know about you, but my daughter's school has two PokeStops and a PokeGym
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That will change. Schools are verboten, but not all of them were removed when the original Ingress portals were used to seed the Pokemon Go world.
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limited playtime
replace USA with "northern hemisphere"
Anomalies (Score:4, Insightful)
Pokemon Go will probably follow the same path as Ingress has. Most players will be casual, but the really dedicated will be really dedicated. They'll probably introduce something akin to Ingress' Anomalies, which'll be big cash cows as players treat them as a holiday splurge-type thing.
Have emergency room admissions fallen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have emergency room admissions also fallen? My neighbor is an ER physician assistant, and she said that about 10% of injuries are Pokemon Go related, mostly from people running around without watching where they are going.
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Those are two independent statistics. Did the neighbour also say they received a 10% increase in the number of injuries, or are stupid people who don't pay attention now simply using pokemon go rather than txting or doing other things with their phone that would have landed them in the ER previously?
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correlation, causation; tomAto, tomAHto
Got it right (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm hooked and have been since it released.
The only problem with the game is that the levelling curve becomes really high from about level 22 onwards. At that point most people will fade out.
Jason.
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The depth is also not there. Catching rats and pidgeons (that have a stupidly high flee rate) gets really old and is 80% of the way you level up (lucky egg and cheap evolutions). Gym battles are stupidly biased toward the attacker and the battle system is repetitive and requires no skill or strategy. It also can only occur in limited locations.
I play the game, but I don't really have much incentive to really go out and play much other than to fill the Pokedex with mostly useless creatures. There are really
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Players getting wiser of the scam (Score:2, Interesting)
A young family member is into this (I suffer from having to pony up an advanced allowance and having accompanying him to wherever these things lurk), and it has become increasingly difficult for him to cope with the unsatiable thirst of the game for "pokeballs" the higher his level gets.
The virtual critters become higher in level the higher in level you are, and they need
Totally untrue (Score:5, Informative)
I'm at level 22 and have never spent a cent.
The "unassailable thirst for pokeballs" is easily quenched by simply visiting a place with a lot of pokestops (airports, malls, movie theaters, museums, etc) and spending a half-hour collecting, or by having the app open while driving anywhere as you can easily trigger a lot of them that are by the road.
I have scores of all three levels of pokeballs just hanging around and I capture everything I can.
I personally think the game is pretty well balanced, the game is nudging to to explore the full range of what is going on... if you are running out of pokeballs, then it may be better to head to a gym and fight there (which gives you virtual coins you would otherwise spend money on). If you are out of resources for fighting, after you've visited a few stops you are usually pretty full of pokeballs again.
The game is defiantly a lot of repetitive actions, but is also still interesting as you find what pokemon like to hang out at different places, watch the ebb and flow of teams at gyms... no worse I'd say than any of the MMORPG games that are so popular.
If nothing else it gets people outside and doing real exercise which automatically puts it heads and shoulders above just about any other game.
I know some impatient people do spend money on the game but I really don't see a pressing need to do so.
Or just have patience (Score:2)
In a couple more levels, get ready to make it an hour. Then get ready to spend some money or stop playing.
For me it will just mean I don't earn levels as fast. I don't care because I'm in it for the long haul, so if it takes me an extra month to make level 30 (I'm thinking possibly for me that's the end of the year) then whatever. I did look at the ominous progression curve and pondered that, I just decided not to care and play for the fun of it...
I'm almost playing more for the future game it may eventua
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Yeah, I'm with you. In fact I think the game makes level progression too easy early on, setting up a false expectation of one level/day progression that suddenly turns into one level/week, then one level/month around level 30 for casual players.
But ... it should be harder to level up!
The game is getting better, buddy pokemon is cute, and finally I can power up rarer pokemon that I have only seen once.
The game needs something for the winter months however. I'm thinking non-local PvP matches (which would requ
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I totally agree, I think the level progression is reasonable as you don't want everyone level 40 in a month, there should be real work required to reach the highest levels. I also pretty much play it doing something Id already be doing anyway, with the occasional outing to get a bunch of stops.
I also like the buddy thing, and as you say the fact that you can get candy now to power up anything of your choosing even if there are few in the wild. It's almost like another infinite incubator!
I agree that some k
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Sorry, but i am discarding pokeballs all the time. Sometimes even superballs and the berries as well.
When you walk a usual route with pokestops, i.e. on your way home, you get a lot of stuff, but most the time you need the potions and revives only.
If you're running out of pokeballs, you're visiting too little pokestops.
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or by having the app open while driving anywhere as you can easily trigger a lot of them that are by the road.
This sounds like an extremely dangerous practise to get into. I've avoided ever opening the game while driving because I never want to put myself in the habit of balancing road safety against game play.
Gyms are not too bad though (Score:2)
That's an interesting point about losing your "infinite" incubator at level 25... I had not realized that.
Although it's nice, I could get by without incubating as much, as high level Pokenmon also appear around from time to time.
Also the earning coins at gyms thing is not too bad, since you can claim money as soon as you capture a gym. So it's not like you even have to hold a gym, you just have to take one over or add to an exiting gym of your color - it's often possible to find two gyms next to each other
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I have never heard you lose your infinite incubator at level 25. I am only lvl 23, but I know a bunch that are higher and have never heard that. Also can't find reference to it anywhere. I think that might be incorrect.
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That would be great if I could find some stable arenas, but pretty much all of the ones I've found so far change hands pretty much daily. Not to mention I chose team yellow, and so far that does seem to be the less populated team so there aren't as many gyms around to just add to...
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No, they're not just passengers. There are lots of people who drive and play. It was bad enough with Ingress, which doesn't require much concentration to use the interface, but Pokemon Go is not nearly so simple.
Not really dangerous (Score:2)
If you just leave the app open and don't do anything with it while driving it's fine, or of course a passenger can do anything (which is more what I meant).
I will admit that while stopped at a light I'll spin a pokestop (you can immediately tap off after spinning and you still collect everything it has).
The main reason to drive around with it on is to discover areas you may want to come back and spend some time, or if you see something like a park up ahead with a lot of stops why not stop for a break?
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My concern at the light is you're now paying attention to the game instead of the intersection. Maybe the phone is being a little funky, maybe a really cool pokemon pops up, maybe the light turns earlier than you expect. Suddenly you're half a second late starting up on the yellow. You're not as aware of the intersection as you should be, you don't see the pedestrian or vehicle that's late going through the light, and you have an accident.
It's a low probability scenario, but if you roll the dice often enoug
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Maybe the phone is being a little funky, maybe a really cool pokemon pops up, maybe the light turns earlier than you expect.
Then you just stop doing whatever. I'm always looking at the light foremost...
There's no risk as long as you are willing to drop it in an instant, and like I said I pretty much just spin pokestops which takes a second - I just leave whatever pokemon pop up where they are.
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If you remain strict about it then it's fine. But personally it seems like one of those things where I might get get more complacent over time and I don't want to give myself that temptation.
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I feel the same way, almost level 25 and have not purchased any items, and still fun. I work in an area where I can walk for 1 hour and hit about 50 Pokestops, and then I go to other places to use them, and the cycle repeats. The first 200 coins I earned from gyms went to a bag upgrade. With 9 5k eggs I have been tempted to purchase some incubators, because after walking 232km so far, I want to open more eggs. I might make that decision after I get to 1000km. If I get into better shape and lost some we
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My tactic was to upgrade my Bag to the max as soon as possible, and I don't spend real $$ on anything else. I am not a 'free' player but I will never spend any $$ again on the game. My philosophy is that app developers and publishers need to be 'rewarded' by paying something for their efforts, esp. when the app is not ad-supported, like Pokemon Go. So early on I spend about $40 on coins, which is the equivalent any other DS-based Pokemon game costs the player. Now, I usually am sitting on ~500 regular p
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Have you ever played? Getting pokeballs is trivial, I'm dumping them all the time to get more inventory space. To be honest, I still don't understand why somebody would spend coins buying them at the store.
Now, incubators...that's another matter.
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The game is not a scam and doesn't force you to buy anything.
You can progress and compete without paying a cent. Pokemon Go is not a pay2win game and I hope it will stay that way.
"The virtual critters become higher in level the higher in level you are, and they need more tries for being trapped (which requires one pokeball each), or require more virtual goodies for increasing their chance of remaining in your poke-inventory."
Have you actually played the game? Virtual critter level is in range 1..your_level.
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I'm level 23 and I haven't spent a penny. Nor will I ever have to, as there all the objects are available by walking around and using the Pokestops. However the game SUCKS for non-urban players due to a lack of pokestops and gyms ... and pokemon.
Just walk to the pokestops and get the balls. Pokemon frequency seems to scale in line with pokestop frequency so you don't have to run out. Spending money on the pokeball option is the stupidest thing to do out of all the items on the shop. You can even earn in-gam
They'll just release the next generation Pokemon (Score:4, Informative)
I think they *want* to reduce participation (Score:4)
The latest release apparently also shuts out anyone with a non-stock ROM or root access to their own devices.
They had made hints of threatening to do that to Ingress some time back but never got that heavy-handed. I suspect Pokemon has a much higher profit margin and they figure they can shut out a whole bunch of players and still rake in tons of money, at least for a while.
I hope they reconsider - there is plenty of room to complain about problems with the gameplay and its limitations, but I'm not going to lie, it's still kind of fun. I'll keep playing it as long as they allow me to - I'll probably even break my usual rule of not wasting real-world money on "virtual" crap once in a while (already done it once). If they shut me out, though, I guess I'm done playing.
(I literally can't go back to the old unmaintained S4 firmware any more for any reason, let alone just to play a game - Samsung's notoriously bad hardware QC bit me again, my USB port no longer works for data, though it still charges for some reason. Not sure how long it was broken before I noticed since I do file transfers over the network via sftp instead of using a data cable, but it means I can't use heimdall/odin to even put back the original firmware and recovery partition any more even if I wanted to.)
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Can't say for sure about non-stock but rooted devices are locked out.
You can easily unroot with SuperSU and it starts working again.
Most non-stock ROMS are probably rooted so unrooting them would likely allow them to work, but I've only unrooted my stock so YMMV.
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It is not that simple. Pokemon Go uses Google SafetyNet framework to detect tampered Android devices (technical write-up: https://koz.io/inside-safetyne... [koz.io] ).
People are already reporting some stock devices failing the SafetyNet checks. Sometimes unrooting leaves behind files and it will also cause SafetyNet checks to fail. You may need to completely reinstall system image to make SafetyNet happy.
It's really pointless. The app upgrade has been officially out for less than a day (android binaries were availab
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You're telling, they use safetynet, which is nearly impossible to circumvent and then you say it will only hurt people not knowing what root is, because it's already circumvented. Somethings wrong here, and i think the first part is the true one :-(
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For anyone running a bootloader there is already an easily available app on XDA which bypasses SafetyNet.
Instead of installing a custom ROM I simply enable developer mode so I could fix the KitKat Bluetooth bug on my LG. SafetyNet detects just having the developer option menu visible, even if turned off, as a violation. The only way I can fix this is through a factory reset (since my LG doesn't give other options to remove developer mode), which was the option I was trying to avoid by enabling developer m
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As far as i know, the way to circumvent it is to temporarily disable root access. Which is a no go, as it would probably disable mandatory root apps like xprivacy and afwall. I do not want (other) apps to phone home while i am playing the game.
Personal Experience (Score:4, Interesting)
When you're at a lower player level, it's lots of fun. Once you've caught most of the local pokemon it soon turns into simple grinding, however --- catching the same common pokemon to get XP, which you need more and more of to increase your level. You also get hugely shortchanged by not being in a major city. The presence of pokestops (necessary sources of in-game items) and more importantly pokemon are tied to where people aggregate. In a small city you will find a fraction of the quantity and of the variety in a big city.
Personally I don't play many games anymore because of the time commitment. Pokemon Go is actually awesome in that respect because for the most part you can only play it wondering around, no temptation to keep playing once you get home or to the office.
I have kept playing in the hopes that the gameplay would improve. But I'm pretty close to quitting myself. Hopefully they can make it enjoyable again before they hemorrhage all of their community.
Wait, you guys pay for it? (Score:1)
Wow.
There really is a sucker born every minute.
Level 23 Valiant
Nothing paid. Ever.
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Level 23 Instinct (Valiant is for losers!!), just spent my first money on it.
Most free to play games, I will try, if I like them and play them for a while I figure it is time to help the cause and pay a bit as I got significant enjoyment out of it. I throw a few bucks at it to support. I think gran total I have paid maybe $50 for free to play aps in 5 or so years.
Not that I needed to pay to play at all, just got to a point where I thought it was time to support the game with a little of my money.
I've noticed a huge decrease (Score:1)
In related news (Score:2)
Niantic blocks root users.