"Pokémon Go" is Nintendo's phenomenal work from consoles to mobile phones. The global simultaneous release started in July last year, and it was downloaded more than 500 million times in just two months! But we know that mobile games are limited by factors such as platform and profitability. Compared with console and client games, the life cycle is much shorter. So a year later, let everyone take their mobile phones to the streets and alleys around the world. Is it okay to collect Pokemon in "Pokemon Go" now?
"Pokémon Go" (PMGO) can be said to be the biggest dark horse in the mobile game market last year. Since its launch in July, it once swept the charts of various countries, with cumulative revenue exceeding US$1 billion. At the beginning of this week, Japanese data AppApe released the "PMGO First Anniversary Report", interpreting PMGO's achievements since its first anniversary from a data perspective.
The Pokémon Company, the copyright owner of PMGO, announced its financial report for fiscal year 2017 on May 29. The company’s net profit in the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 was 15.921 billion yen (approximately 1 billion), a year-on-year increase of 25 times, setting a new record in the company’s history. Among them, except for the handheld version of "Pokémon Sun and Moon", its revenue growth mainly comes from PMGO developed by Niantic.
Compared with traditional mobile games, PMGO’s revenue comes not only from players’ payments, but also from offline physical stores. On the one hand, the game adopts LBS gameplay, which is bound to offline buildings. When players approach these locations, they can obtain various resources. This move will allow more players to go to offline special stores, and every PMGO player who enters the store will pay a commission of US$0.5. Even during the Great East Japan Earthquake, a large number of pokestops were put in to attract players to travel and promote local economic construction.
Although there have been many reports before that the number of active users of PMGO has declined, its activity still firmly occupies the first place in the ranking of adventure games. As of May 2017, its MAU has still reached its peak of about 55, which is about 60 million people. The report pointed out that although PMGO-related news and topic popularity have dropped significantly compared to last year, it still maintains extremely high popularity. At the same time, the popularity of PMGO has also given Ingress a second life. Its current MAU is about 33 at its peak.
A detailed analysis of PMGO users shows that, except for about 45 users who have been lost, the report classifies users according to their activity. Those who play for no more than 10 days per month are light players, and those who play for no more than 10 days per month are classified as light players. Those who have played for 20 days are heavy players, and those who have played for more than 21 days are core players.
From the chart above, we can clearly see that PMGO users are polarized. The number of light users exceeds 30, core users account for about 20, and heavy users account for less than 5. The report pointed out that these 20 core users have maintained this proportion since the game was launched in July last year, especially since October last year, there has been a slow growth trend. In contrast, the lost users are mainly moderate players.
We have said before that the scale of PMGO's core users has been quite stable, and the growth in user scale mainly comes from light players. Judging from its DAU data, the growth in the number of active users is closely related to in-game activities. Especially on December 12 last year, when Pikachu from the Johto area appeared in the game for a limited time, its DAU data once exceeded 40. The second-generation Pokémon update on February 16 this year also brought a wave of peaks to the game.
The report concluded that the popularity of PMGO also prompted the Pokémon Company to increase the use of the Pokémon IP on the mobile terminal.
On the 23rd of last month, The Pokémon Company released its own idle game "Jump!" "King Magikarp" has remained at the top of the free list for 10 consecutive days after its launch in Japan, and has even become a popular topic.