Pokémon Go has to slow down eventually. We know this and we’re still going to be devastated when it does. For some reason the gleeful surge of excited new players has been a positive influence on our lives. And, speaking of players, new reports claim that Pokémon Go has racked up 100 million downloads since its launch. That’s a whole lot of players right there.
To give you an idea of how quick the uptake was, the augmented reality game clocked up 50 million downloads in just 19 days before leaping to 75 million downloads. On 25 July the app was standing on 75 million downloads and it cracked the 100 million mark this past weekend. An App Annie report pegs the game’s daily revenue at over $10 million, when the figures for iOS and Google Play are combined.
Even the shutdown of services tied to Pokémon Go, which offered to track the location of various Poké-beasts, hasn’t done much to dampen enthusiasm, though it has provoked some outcry. A recent update torched access to the app by these services, something that Niantic claims was done for the good of players.
Niantic said “We have limited access by third-party services which were interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service for our users and to bring Pokémon GO to users around the world. The large number of users has made the roll-out of Pokémon GO around the world an… interesting… challenge.”
And Nintendo and Niantic definitely seem to be looking at some long-term strategy. There’s the Pokémon Go Plus, which is set to launch in September and dump some more cash into Nintendo’s coffers. And we’re pretty sure there are still a few countries anxiously awaiting an official rollout of the app… hint, hint.