Here's a conversation I've often had or heard at various AR/VR events over the last couple years:
"VR games might not be ready to go mass market, but Augmented Reality games for smartphones have potential."
"Maybe, but Pokémon GO was huge for a while, then turned out to be just a fad. You don't see anyone on the street looking for Pokémon anymore."
"Yeah, true."
No, not true, not true at all. According to SuperData, there were 147 million active Pokemon Go users in May 2018 -- i.e. considerably more than Fortnite, which is supposed to be gaming's current top dog with only 125 million players.
"I know that may seem counterintuitive," SuperData's Stephanie Llamas tells me, "but based on our internal data that's the number we are seeing. There is likely less frequency of gameplay but more people logging in overall."
After becoming a massive hit in the Summer of 2016, to the point where it seemed like everyone outside in major US cities was playing, the game experienced a sharp drop. At which point, many people in the VR/AR world wrote it off. (Including, I'm embarrassed to say, me.)
But the game kept growing -- especially outside the US:
According to SimilarWeb, the game's homepage only gets a fourth of its traffic from the US, with high activity coming from Brazil, Germany, and Poland.
According to Google Trends (above), Pokémon GO draws high interest from Asia -- specifically Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In fact, based on region, the US currently ranks 17th in countries most interested in Pokémon GO.
So, yes -- common Silicon Valley wisdom to contrary (and that wisdom is often unwise), Pokémon GO is not just a fad, but a thriving augmented reality game world. Which suggests that the Harry Potter AR game from the same company may become just as big if not more so. And even more key, augmented reality may very well have a bright, immediate future. (And, of course, is yet another proof point suggesting that Americans need to get out of our reality distortion bubble more.)
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