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Apple says Pokémon Go is the most downloaded app in its first week ever

422 points by doppp 10y ago

curiousgal 10y ago
This game has become a victim of its own success. Niantic has be strangely silent about bugs and server outages. I foresee a massive drop in interest soon.
- liquidise 10y ago
  I keep seeing these comments foretelling the "inevitable" doomsday from the development community. This is a surprising sentiment. What Pokemon Go has shown, regardless of its future success, is a new ceiling for mobile app virality. Also notable is that people always cite the issues as the reason for failure. But these issues have affected the app since day 0. Pokemon Go is having this success despite its technical flaws. Further evidence that building the right product trumps building a flawless product. I say flip the narrative. What Pokemon Go has shown is that a product that fills a burning desire can achieve what seems like unprecedented success levels, quickly. The app doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be something people want.
  - anthonybsd 10y ago
    I've been playing since day one and I've already lost interest. Most everyone I've spoken to is of the same thinking. It was fun at the beginning but there is simply not enough substance in the game to keep anyone interested for more than 2-3 weeks. There are only so many Doduos and Pidgeys you can catch before you are bored out of your mind.
    - lettergram 10y ago
      I'm actually at level 23, and I'm trying to "catch them all" - or at least, all that are in my country. Once I do that, I'll probably just wait for more content. That way I'll be well positioned if new content comes out. The game hasn't even been released in every country, and to be honest I don't think it should have been released at all (at least until the combat system was decent). However, they clearly have an extremely popular game. Even if 99% drop off, and only 50% return they will still be raking in the dough.
      - curiousgal 10y ago
        Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get to that level? I am still rocking a level 12.
        lettergram 10y ago
        Well, I leave the game open at work and just spin the stops near me (there are three). Ive also walk an average of 20k steps per day since Pokemon Go came out. I usually walk 15k steps, so it was a 30% increase.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      I think what you and a lot of other people are talking about is burnout. People who are in the mid-20s levels have likely been playing quite a bit. Even if they started on day 1. But I think the game has a lot of longevity for more casual players.
  - fpgaminer 10y ago
    Terribly true, and in some ways disheartening. Pokemon Go is successful because of the branding and I find it hard to imagine any independent developer achieving even a faint modicum of the same success within the same category (geo-AR games) for lack of that branding. Heck, even amongst established, popular brands which other ones could possibly have gotten the necessary critical mass off their butts and outside playing the game? Pokemon was sort of the perfect storm in that sense. And that, to me, is a shame. I quite like the overall geo-AR concept. I live in a wholly uninteresting, mostly depressed (economically) area. Pokemon Go brings vibrancy and life to the surroundings, making it worthwhile to get outside and explore this new "world". But when Pokemon Go dies, the city will go back to being what it always was underneath; a bland mixture of concrete, terrible food, and pay day loans. Will anything be able to pick up Pokemon Go's mantle? I have my doubts, and that's disheartening.
    - yoshyosh 10y ago
      There's alot more that can be done. AR really feels like a chance to merge the real world with the digital finally. The indie developer would build on top of the platform that these new AR experiences create, not necessarily rebuilding these monoliths themselves (there should be no need). Once everyone is "living" in this AR world, we start all over again with new things that need to be made for it.
  - davidsawyer 10y ago
    > building the right product trumps building a flawless product. Y Combinator has been saying this for years, and I couldn't agree more. Niantic will iterate and fix problems, but Pokemon Go would have been doomed from the start if it wasn't what people wanted.
- jachee 10y ago
  >Niantic has be strangely silent about bugs and server outages. Honestly, this isn't surprising. Niantic isn't historically vocal about behind-the-scenes stuff.
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  "It's so crowded nobody goes there anymore" Niantic has experience in longevity for this type of game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) ... Nintendo does too. Though I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the first week meeting years of pent up demand.
  - seangrogg 10y ago
    The people that were interested in Ingress wanted a game that involved geolocation. The people that are playing Pokemon Go wanted a Pokemon game that put Pokemon "in their world". Unfortunately, Niantic is currently giving PoGo players a reskinned Ingress. Their ability to maintain a small community of players interested in a geolocation game, while notable, does not extend to their ability to maintain a massive community of players interested in a Pokemon game. I enjoy the game, but I'm playing for the same reason I continued to play .hack//Infection after I beat it: I'm making small investments in its future potential. But I refuse to spend a dime on it in its current state - a game that has neither the trading experience, the combat depth, or the sense of community that even the original Red and Blue versions offered out of the box.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      Dude, it's been like 2 weeks. The game isn't even rolled out globally yet. Give them a second or two before we start talking about how the game lacks longevity. If you're burned out from power-gaming 4+ hours a day trying to catch them all, well then that's really a personal issue. Just doing the basics of catching all the types of pokemon offers HUGE amounts of longevity for more casual players who don't burn themselves out.
      - seangrogg 10y ago
        I didn't say the game lacks longevity, nor did I say I was burned out, nor do I have the battery life to play it 4+ hours per day (because I don't feel the need to play, recharge, and play again). This is one of few games that I am very casual about on the play side, mostly because I'm more enamored with what potential the API hacking community has to offer than I am with the game itself.
- empath75 10y ago
  It's pretty easy to see just walking around the neighborhood that there's already been a drop in interest.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Strange. In my neighborhood there has actually been an increase in players in the last week... They mostly come out at night though.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      ... mostly.
    - toss1941 10y ago
      A month ago on my bike rides through a downtown park and along a river there were usually a decent group of people out enjoying the sunshine along the river, maybe 10% of them were using their phones. The other day I went through there and there were more (and younger) people out and virtually all of them were staring at their phones. Never seen anything like it in such a place.
- peter303 10y ago
  Are they using the Google Cloud as the server?
- leojg 10y ago
  In most of the world it is not even available, it will continue burning for a couple of months and if they add PvP, trading and other good stuff that the gameboy games had they will ensure indefinite success.
- vlunkr 10y ago
  So in a thread about how massively successful this game is, we are all predicting the inevitable doom? Why? Of course one day it will die out, but so will literally every other game. So far these things have not stood in the way.
- nperez 10y ago
  I think they'll be in trouble if a competitor makes an AR game based on a similarly popular IP that is more smoothed out. I'm not sure feasible that is in the near future, but it could happen. The bugs and lack of features aren't going to be a big problem for some people because for them, it's as much a "meeting random people" app as it is a game. It's an ice breaker. Fighting over the gym with people from the neighborhood. Doesn't need to be complicated.
- aiyodev 10y ago
  Where I live, the public parks are full of crowds of people and have Pokemon Go signs telling them that the park closes at 11pm and must leave. The rail stations have Pokemon Go signs warning travelers to pay attention when crossing the tracks. Business are throwing Pokemon Go-themed events to bring in customers. Bars are offering Pokemon Go themed drinks with discounts for players. I was downtown when there was a four-hour outage of the servers. I saw on my server monitor that the login server came back online. I logged in immediately. From my location I could see about two dozen Pokemon stops. None of them had lures. Within five minutes, half of them had lures. Only a handful of immature children on the internet care about the minor bugs and server issues. There will be no drop in interest any time soon.
chipperyman573 10y ago
I'm confused by the title. Is PoGo the first app to reach x downloads in the first week of release, or is it the most downloaded app of all time, just one week after release? Slow internet won't let me view the article.
- _asummers 10y ago
  Of all apps that have been released, Pokemon Go has more downloads during the first week than any other app had during the first week.
- puddintane 10y ago
  "While the game was only available in a few countries at the time, the app has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history."
  - awqrre 10y ago
    That probably mean that hey had more downloads then any other app's first week but it could also mean more downloads then any other app since their initial release?
- cag_ii 10y ago
  Quote from the article: "... the app has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history."
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    That's still ambiguous.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      I see these two interpretations: 1. Pokemon Go has more downloads during its first week than any other app has had during its own first week. 2. Pokemon Go has more downloads during its first week than any other app has had in its entire existence. The first seems much more probable. Honestly the second isn't even reasonable when you consider apps like Facebook. Facebook has more users and more possible downloads because their app also works on tablets. Update: I don't disagree with you. It seems all articles have used the same (possibly intentionally) ambiguous quote.
smaili 10y ago
Would love to know the app who previously held the record.
- jandrese 10y ago
  I'd bet on something like the Facebook app, assuming they advertised it heavily when it first came out.
  - Jackim 10y ago
    Facebook has been out for ages though, the number of total devices has grown significantly since then.
- Thaxll 10y ago
  It's probably another game.
  - vhost- 10y ago
    Maybe flappy bird?
    - nikanj 10y ago
      No, flappy bird was a slow burn
    - jandrese 10y ago
      A big week 1 surge requires pre-existing name recognition. Games with a 2 in the name are the next most likely to have heavy first week downloads. Angry Birds 2 or Bejeweled 2 for example.
    - mnem 10y ago
      Flappy Bird wasn't overly popular when it came out, it was only later on that it went viral (I think about 6 months or so after it launched).
- deleted 10y ago
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jandrese 10y ago
Shows you just how much pent up demand there was for Nintendo to release games on mobile. Getting a huge first week download count is a lot easier when you have literally decades of brand recognition. Being a free download certainly didn't hurt either. It remains to be seen what the customer retention numbers look like. I saw some absolutely insane projections earlier this week about how Apple and Nintendo were going to make billions off of Pokemon Go. I don't see how they're going to sustain the current game as it gets fairly grindy and there isn't much to do once you've caught them all. Maybe some compelling new features will be added to keep players from getting bored? Direct peer to peer battles and possibly trading for example.
- mtrpcic 10y ago
  Honestly, those compelling new features need to come soon. I've only caught maybe 50% of the catalog, and it's already getting really grindy. It's a LOT harder to pull users back onto the platform once they've left than it is to keep them enticed while they're already on. I predict something like a 70% dropoff rate for users over the next 30 days unless they release something shiny and new[0] [0] Purely anecdotal, but based on multiple contacts already getting bored enough to uninstall
  - losteric 10y ago
    I've already stopped playing... I was at level 23 and with well over 50% caught, and I still had no chance of winning local gyms. It's not engaging unless I can compete, and I wasn't willing to heavily grind on a casual game just to fight random people. I realized Pokemon Go was just a "background activity" for hanging out with friends... and I'd rather focus on the people. I'll jump back in as soon as they added trading and player vs player.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      In my experience, people who hold down gyms are high schoolers or college students out for the summer. Hard to compete with them when they have free summers!
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hogwash 10y ago
Funny retrospective on the last 25 years of AR: http://unanimous.ai/augmented-reality-then-and-now/ http://unanimous.ai/augmented-reality-then-and-now/
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TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
Have I missed something, or is this game just about walking around collecting pokemons with eggs? Is there anything else to it that I missed? The interface isn't illuminating.
- nicky0 10y ago
  There's a bit more to it than that, but essentially, yes. The "eggs" are called pokéballs.
  - hundchenkatze 10y ago
    Well, the "eggs" aren't actually Pokéballs. The eggs are eggs that contain Pokémon and eventually hatch[0]. While Pokéballs are used to catch wild Pokémon[1]. [0] http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/Eggs_and_Hatching http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/Eggs_and_Hatching [1] http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/How_to_Catch_Pokemon http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/How_to_Catch_Pokemon
- aram 10y ago
  Honestly, I have exactly the same question. I saw dozen articles that talk about the thing but noone mentions exactly how it works / what happens after you catch a pokemon.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    Interesting observation So the thing is that nobody knew how it worked and all the information has been word of mouth from the process of deduction annnnd people like it, which is the primary driving factor (so the answer is open the app? if you are in a launched country)
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      > So the thing is that nobody knew how it worked and all the information has been word of mouth from the process of deduction I really like this about it. At the popular spots near me, you can overhear a lot of rumors and guessing about how certain features work. "My friend says he caught his Dragonite at this gas station! But I wasn't there to see it, so I don't know if it's true." It reminds me of the original games. When people would spread rumors about how "holding __ button while the pokeball spins make it work better" or "You can catch mew if you glitch behind this truck." and so on, almost none of them actually being true. In a few weeks, we'll have a P:GO Wiki filled with confirmed information, people analyzing the binaries to see what does and doesn't exist, realtime maps of exact pokemon locations.... And I just don't think it will be as magical anymore. I much prefer "I think you can find this pokemon in that park" over "There is one of them at this intersection, and you have 11 minutes and 34 seconds until it despawns. Be sure to feed it only 2 razz berries, and then use a left curveball for the best odds."
Osiris 10y ago
75% of the time I launch the game, I'm confronted with an error that I couldn't be logged in. Maybe the game is so popular because it feels like a rare resource. It's so hard to get into the game that when you do you have to play it as long as possible until the servers go down again.
kin 10y ago
The numbers will absolutely drop. I mean, there's definitely a ton of content that can be added like earning gym badges, Gen 2-6 Pokemon (which people don't really care about), trading, PvP, etc. But, at the end of the day I doubt Niantic has the time/resources for that. The execution has been rather poor. Still though there's a demand for Nintendo software on mobile. They just need to really to execute. They're really lucky we're tolerating these huge bugs (nearby Pokemon and frozen Pokeball after catch still outstanding).
- dabeeeenster 10y ago
  Got to love Hacker News! Fastest downloading app of all time, global phenomenon, absolute zeitgeist..."The execution has been rather poor."
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    "Worse is Better" in action? :)
  - kin 10y ago
    You have to admit they're lucky we love Pokemon so much that we're willing to tolerate restarting the game every 2 minutes to continue playing the game. I'm on HN. When I say execution is poor, I'm referring to their technical execution. In terms of game design, as someone who puts in several hours a day into the game, the execution is of course great.
  - bllguo 10y ago
    > Fastest downloading app of all time, global phenomenon, absolute zeitgeist All three of which can be attributed in large part to the Pokemon IP, rather than any other characteristic of the game.
    - Keyframe 10y ago
      You're saying that like Nintendo had nothing to do with making that IP what it is in the first place.
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MattyRad 10y ago
When someone told me that Pokemon Go was exploding, I looked into it, and got really excited about its concept. People getting outside, interacting though a long-loved game, using real landmarks to denote checkpoints, playing a localized "king of the hill" type minigame. The architecture behind it and it really feels like it's using bleeding edge VR push us into a more social and fun world. That said, I also feel like it's equally the biggest missed opportunity to date. Usually, I just see players walking, heads down, not talking. It was downright eerie when I was downtown one Tuesday night at midnight, and it was dead quiet despite ~60 Pokemon players meandering about. They should have introduced PvP earlier (hopefully it's around the corner!), and better yet, make it so you get more exp for battling people you haven't battled before. Spur people into social interaction!
- 0x0 10y ago
  I think they've solved the battle mechanics very elegantly by avoiding direct PvP, likely on purpose, to prevent too many real-world confrontations escalating.
- kevindong 10y ago
  My experience (being on a college campus, however dead it may be during the summer) has been the opposite. People who otherwise wouldn't talk to each other are openly walking up to each other to talk about Pokemon Go. A coworker of mine and his girlfriend have also started hanging out (as in, indoors and double dating by not playing Pokemon together) with another couple they met while hunting for Pokemon.
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  You know that one mobile "space pilot" game? The one where everyone's phone displays different elements of a fictional spacecraft, with buttons labeled "Power Overdrive" and knobs and levers to pull with crazy names? And players get instructions they need to shout to other players, like "Whoever has the Neutrino Ray, set it to 4!" Basically, the game forces one big fun social interaction by requiring players to exchange information to stay alive. How could this work with Pokemon Go? I don't know. Currently the only social exchanges are "There's a Blastoise over here!" (which is pretty darn cool). But maybe more could be done. Some type of puzzle where one person in an area is designated the "Puzzle leader," and gets to rely information to other people...
blhack 10y ago
I think that the biggest feature that Pokemon Go will add, that will hopefully come soon, is the ability to broadcast your position. This is something that I wish ingress had done. The game is a multiplayer game, there is no doubt about that. I'd love to be able to open map map, see that some of my friends are over playing at $foo location, and then go meet them there.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Ingress had at least a proxy for that - an in-game chat with distance-filtering, i.e. you could limit messages you see to sources closer than X kilometers. As for third-party tools, someone somehow made a player tracker once; I think it used changes in portal owners to narrow down your location.
  - blhack 10y ago
    I think that the player tracker could get you banned from the game, though. It technically violates the ToS.
- rezashirazian 10y ago
  I built a chat app for pokemon go that allows people within a 5 mile radius to chat anonymously. It also has a crowd sourced pokemon spawn map where people can broadcast and located pokemons within their vicinity. Once I can get Apple to stop rejecting it I'll post a link.
melling 10y ago
So, do we have an entirely new class of games/apps that are about to appear? Like Pokémon go but for ...
- rezashirazian 10y ago
  Yes. I bet you plenty of companies are already on it as we speak.
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kevindong 10y ago
The dropoff in interest has already started. I pretty much stopped playing last week. I got to level 14 and the amount of grinding required was just ridiculous (the amount of XP you earn per action does not increase as you level up meanwhile the XP required to level up goes up exponentially). The bugginess of the game really did not help. The dropoff in interest has already, objectively speaking, started[0]. It's currently (as of July 22) 66% of its peak (per Google Trends). In my personal experience, interest on my college campus has already subsided. It's not completely dead, mind you, but the hype is over. [0]: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pokemon%20go&date=today%201-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pokemon%20go&date=to...
plet 10y ago
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mp3geek 10y ago
How does the numbers stack up between the downloads on Google play vs Apple?
meerita 10y ago
A game can't have everything the first day of launch. They released this to test it against the market. Now that it is a success, changes will come to increase retention and purchases. Now the next biggest events will be promoted also with Pokemon things to do in the place, like "get this rare pokemon on the Vegas Electronic Event. The game is a real success and the mechanics described by Richard Bartle proved that people loves to collect, it is the Diogenes syndrome but in mobile version.
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Bonsailinse 10y ago
These numbers are probably the reason why niantic was totally caught by surprise and have these massive server issues. I really don't like to see the app offline every time I have to go for a longer walk, but hey, I take it easy and wait for either niantiv upgrading their ressources or the userbase to shrink, which shouldn't take too long imo.
xlayn 10y ago
As time pass there are more iDevices.... so the number can be irrelevant. So maybe a percentage as download/devices?

422 points by doppp 10y ago

This game has become a victim of its own success. Niantic has be strangely silent about bugs and server outages. I foresee a massive drop in interest soon.

liquidise 10y ago
I keep seeing these comments foretelling the "inevitable" doomsday from the development community. This is a surprising sentiment. What Pokemon Go has shown, regardless of its future success, is a new ceiling for mobile app virality. Also notable is that people always cite the issues as the reason for failure. But these issues have affected the app since day 0. Pokemon Go is having this success despite its technical flaws. Further evidence that building the right product trumps building a flawless product. I say flip the narrative. What Pokemon Go has shown is that a product that fills a burning desire can achieve what seems like unprecedented success levels, quickly. The app doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be something people want.
- anthonybsd 10y ago
  I've been playing since day one and I've already lost interest. Most everyone I've spoken to is of the same thinking. It was fun at the beginning but there is simply not enough substance in the game to keep anyone interested for more than 2-3 weeks. There are only so many Doduos and Pidgeys you can catch before you are bored out of your mind.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    I'm actually at level 23, and I'm trying to "catch them all" - or at least, all that are in my country. Once I do that, I'll probably just wait for more content. That way I'll be well positioned if new content comes out. The game hasn't even been released in every country, and to be honest I don't think it should have been released at all (at least until the combat system was decent). However, they clearly have an extremely popular game. Even if 99% drop off, and only 50% return they will still be raking in the dough.
    - curiousgal 10y ago
      Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get to that level? I am still rocking a level 12.
      - lettergram 10y ago
        Well, I leave the game open at work and just spin the stops near me (there are three). Ive also walk an average of 20k steps per day since Pokemon Go came out. I usually walk 15k steps, so it was a 30% increase.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    I think what you and a lot of other people are talking about is burnout. People who are in the mid-20s levels have likely been playing quite a bit. Even if they started on day 1. But I think the game has a lot of longevity for more casual players.
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  Terribly true, and in some ways disheartening. Pokemon Go is successful because of the branding and I find it hard to imagine any independent developer achieving even a faint modicum of the same success within the same category (geo-AR games) for lack of that branding. Heck, even amongst established, popular brands which other ones could possibly have gotten the necessary critical mass off their butts and outside playing the game? Pokemon was sort of the perfect storm in that sense. And that, to me, is a shame. I quite like the overall geo-AR concept. I live in a wholly uninteresting, mostly depressed (economically) area. Pokemon Go brings vibrancy and life to the surroundings, making it worthwhile to get outside and explore this new "world". But when Pokemon Go dies, the city will go back to being what it always was underneath; a bland mixture of concrete, terrible food, and pay day loans. Will anything be able to pick up Pokemon Go's mantle? I have my doubts, and that's disheartening.
  - yoshyosh 10y ago
    There's alot more that can be done. AR really feels like a chance to merge the real world with the digital finally. The indie developer would build on top of the platform that these new AR experiences create, not necessarily rebuilding these monoliths themselves (there should be no need). Once everyone is "living" in this AR world, we start all over again with new things that need to be made for it.
- davidsawyer 10y ago
  > building the right product trumps building a flawless product. Y Combinator has been saying this for years, and I couldn't agree more. Niantic will iterate and fix problems, but Pokemon Go would have been doomed from the start if it wasn't what people wanted.
jachee 10y ago
>Niantic has be strangely silent about bugs and server outages. Honestly, this isn't surprising. Niantic isn't historically vocal about behind-the-scenes stuff.
hyperpallium 10y ago
"It's so crowded nobody goes there anymore" Niantic has experience in longevity for this type of game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) ... Nintendo does too. Though I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the first week meeting years of pent up demand.
- seangrogg 10y ago
  The people that were interested in Ingress wanted a game that involved geolocation. The people that are playing Pokemon Go wanted a Pokemon game that put Pokemon "in their world". Unfortunately, Niantic is currently giving PoGo players a reskinned Ingress. Their ability to maintain a small community of players interested in a geolocation game, while notable, does not extend to their ability to maintain a massive community of players interested in a Pokemon game. I enjoy the game, but I'm playing for the same reason I continued to play .hack//Infection after I beat it: I'm making small investments in its future potential. But I refuse to spend a dime on it in its current state - a game that has neither the trading experience, the combat depth, or the sense of community that even the original Red and Blue versions offered out of the box.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    Dude, it's been like 2 weeks. The game isn't even rolled out globally yet. Give them a second or two before we start talking about how the game lacks longevity. If you're burned out from power-gaming 4+ hours a day trying to catch them all, well then that's really a personal issue. Just doing the basics of catching all the types of pokemon offers HUGE amounts of longevity for more casual players who don't burn themselves out.
    - seangrogg 10y ago
      I didn't say the game lacks longevity, nor did I say I was burned out, nor do I have the battery life to play it 4+ hours per day (because I don't feel the need to play, recharge, and play again). This is one of few games that I am very casual about on the play side, mostly because I'm more enamored with what potential the API hacking community has to offer than I am with the game itself.
empath75 10y ago
It's pretty easy to see just walking around the neighborhood that there's already been a drop in interest.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Strange. In my neighborhood there has actually been an increase in players in the last week... They mostly come out at night though.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    ... mostly.
  - toss1941 10y ago
    A month ago on my bike rides through a downtown park and along a river there were usually a decent group of people out enjoying the sunshine along the river, maybe 10% of them were using their phones. The other day I went through there and there were more (and younger) people out and virtually all of them were staring at their phones. Never seen anything like it in such a place.
peter303 10y ago
Are they using the Google Cloud as the server?
leojg 10y ago
In most of the world it is not even available, it will continue burning for a couple of months and if they add PvP, trading and other good stuff that the gameboy games had they will ensure indefinite success.
vlunkr 10y ago
So in a thread about how massively successful this game is, we are all predicting the inevitable doom? Why? Of course one day it will die out, but so will literally every other game. So far these things have not stood in the way.
nperez 10y ago
I think they'll be in trouble if a competitor makes an AR game based on a similarly popular IP that is more smoothed out. I'm not sure feasible that is in the near future, but it could happen. The bugs and lack of features aren't going to be a big problem for some people because for them, it's as much a "meeting random people" app as it is a game. It's an ice breaker. Fighting over the gym with people from the neighborhood. Doesn't need to be complicated.
aiyodev 10y ago
Where I live, the public parks are full of crowds of people and have Pokemon Go signs telling them that the park closes at 11pm and must leave. The rail stations have Pokemon Go signs warning travelers to pay attention when crossing the tracks. Business are throwing Pokemon Go-themed events to bring in customers. Bars are offering Pokemon Go themed drinks with discounts for players. I was downtown when there was a four-hour outage of the servers. I saw on my server monitor that the login server came back online. I logged in immediately. From my location I could see about two dozen Pokemon stops. None of them had lures. Within five minutes, half of them had lures. Only a handful of immature children on the internet care about the minor bugs and server issues. There will be no drop in interest any time soon.

chipperyman573 10y ago

I'm confused by the title. Is PoGo the first app to reach x downloads in the first week of release, or is it the most downloaded app of all time, just one week after release? Slow internet won't let me view the article.

_asummers 10y ago
Of all apps that have been released, Pokemon Go has more downloads during the first week than any other app had during the first week.
puddintane 10y ago
"While the game was only available in a few countries at the time, the app has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history."
- awqrre 10y ago
  That probably mean that hey had more downloads then any other app's first week but it could also mean more downloads then any other app since their initial release?
cag_ii 10y ago
Quote from the article: "... the app has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history."
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  That's still ambiguous.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    I see these two interpretations: 1. Pokemon Go has more downloads during its first week than any other app has had during its own first week. 2. Pokemon Go has more downloads during its first week than any other app has had in its entire existence. The first seems much more probable. Honestly the second isn't even reasonable when you consider apps like Facebook. Facebook has more users and more possible downloads because their app also works on tablets. Update: I don't disagree with you. It seems all articles have used the same (possibly intentionally) ambiguous quote.

smaili 10y ago

Would love to know the app who previously held the record.

jandrese 10y ago
I'd bet on something like the Facebook app, assuming they advertised it heavily when it first came out.
- Jackim 10y ago
  Facebook has been out for ages though, the number of total devices has grown significantly since then.
Thaxll 10y ago
It's probably another game.
- vhost- 10y ago
  Maybe flappy bird?
  - nikanj 10y ago
    No, flappy bird was a slow burn
  - jandrese 10y ago
    A big week 1 surge requires pre-existing name recognition. Games with a 2 in the name are the next most likely to have heavy first week downloads. Angry Birds 2 or Bejeweled 2 for example.
  - mnem 10y ago
    Flappy Bird wasn't overly popular when it came out, it was only later on that it went viral (I think about 6 months or so after it launched).
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jandrese 10y ago

Shows you just how much pent up demand there was for Nintendo to release games on mobile. Getting a huge first week download count is a lot easier when you have literally decades of brand recognition. Being a free download certainly didn't hurt either. It remains to be seen what the customer retention numbers look like. I saw some absolutely insane projections earlier this week about how Apple and Nintendo were going to make billions off of Pokemon Go. I don't see how they're going to sustain the current game as it gets fairly grindy and there isn't much to do once you've caught them all. Maybe some compelling new features will be added to keep players from getting bored? Direct peer to peer battles and possibly trading for example.

mtrpcic 10y ago
Honestly, those compelling new features need to come soon. I've only caught maybe 50% of the catalog, and it's already getting really grindy. It's a LOT harder to pull users back onto the platform once they've left than it is to keep them enticed while they're already on. I predict something like a 70% dropoff rate for users over the next 30 days unless they release something shiny and new[0] [0] Purely anecdotal, but based on multiple contacts already getting bored enough to uninstall
- losteric 10y ago
  I've already stopped playing... I was at level 23 and with well over 50% caught, and I still had no chance of winning local gyms. It's not engaging unless I can compete, and I wasn't willing to heavily grind on a casual game just to fight random people. I realized Pokemon Go was just a "background activity" for hanging out with friends... and I'd rather focus on the people. I'll jump back in as soon as they added trading and player vs player.
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    In my experience, people who hold down gyms are high schoolers or college students out for the summer. Hard to compete with them when they have free summers!

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hogwash 10y ago

Funny retrospective on the last 25 years of AR: http://unanimous.ai/augmented-reality-then-and-now/ http://unanimous.ai/augmented-reality-then-and-now/

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TheMagicHorsey 10y ago

Have I missed something, or is this game just about walking around collecting pokemons with eggs? Is there anything else to it that I missed? The interface isn't illuminating.

nicky0 10y ago
There's a bit more to it than that, but essentially, yes. The "eggs" are called pokéballs.
- hundchenkatze 10y ago
  Well, the "eggs" aren't actually Pokéballs. The eggs are eggs that contain Pokémon and eventually hatch[0]. While Pokéballs are used to catch wild Pokémon[1]. [0] http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/Eggs_and_Hatching http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/Eggs_and_Hatching [1] http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/How_to_Catch_Pokemon http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go/How_to_Catch_Pokemon
aram 10y ago
Honestly, I have exactly the same question. I saw dozen articles that talk about the thing but noone mentions exactly how it works / what happens after you catch a pokemon.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Interesting observation So the thing is that nobody knew how it worked and all the information has been word of mouth from the process of deduction annnnd people like it, which is the primary driving factor (so the answer is open the app? if you are in a launched country)
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    > So the thing is that nobody knew how it worked and all the information has been word of mouth from the process of deduction I really like this about it. At the popular spots near me, you can overhear a lot of rumors and guessing about how certain features work. "My friend says he caught his Dragonite at this gas station! But I wasn't there to see it, so I don't know if it's true." It reminds me of the original games. When people would spread rumors about how "holding __ button while the pokeball spins make it work better" or "You can catch mew if you glitch behind this truck." and so on, almost none of them actually being true. In a few weeks, we'll have a P:GO Wiki filled with confirmed information, people analyzing the binaries to see what does and doesn't exist, realtime maps of exact pokemon locations.... And I just don't think it will be as magical anymore. I much prefer "I think you can find this pokemon in that park" over "There is one of them at this intersection, and you have 11 minutes and 34 seconds until it despawns. Be sure to feed it only 2 razz berries, and then use a left curveball for the best odds."

Osiris 10y ago

75% of the time I launch the game, I'm confronted with an error that I couldn't be logged in. Maybe the game is so popular because it feels like a rare resource. It's so hard to get into the game that when you do you have to play it as long as possible until the servers go down again.

kin 10y ago

The numbers will absolutely drop. I mean, there's definitely a ton of content that can be added like earning gym badges, Gen 2-6 Pokemon (which people don't really care about), trading, PvP, etc. But, at the end of the day I doubt Niantic has the time/resources for that. The execution has been rather poor. Still though there's a demand for Nintendo software on mobile. They just need to really to execute. They're really lucky we're tolerating these huge bugs (nearby Pokemon and frozen Pokeball after catch still outstanding).

dabeeeenster 10y ago
Got to love Hacker News! Fastest downloading app of all time, global phenomenon, absolute zeitgeist..."The execution has been rather poor."
- Karunamon 10y ago
  "Worse is Better" in action? :)
- kin 10y ago
  You have to admit they're lucky we love Pokemon so much that we're willing to tolerate restarting the game every 2 minutes to continue playing the game. I'm on HN. When I say execution is poor, I'm referring to their technical execution. In terms of game design, as someone who puts in several hours a day into the game, the execution is of course great.
- bllguo 10y ago
  > Fastest downloading app of all time, global phenomenon, absolute zeitgeist All three of which can be attributed in large part to the Pokemon IP, rather than any other characteristic of the game.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    You're saying that like Nintendo had nothing to do with making that IP what it is in the first place.

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MattyRad 10y ago

When someone told me that Pokemon Go was exploding, I looked into it, and got really excited about its concept. People getting outside, interacting though a long-loved game, using real landmarks to denote checkpoints, playing a localized "king of the hill" type minigame. The architecture behind it and it really feels like it's using bleeding edge VR push us into a more social and fun world. That said, I also feel like it's equally the biggest missed opportunity to date. Usually, I just see players walking, heads down, not talking. It was downright eerie when I was downtown one Tuesday night at midnight, and it was dead quiet despite ~60 Pokemon players meandering about. They should have introduced PvP earlier (hopefully it's around the corner!), and better yet, make it so you get more exp for battling people you haven't battled before. Spur people into social interaction!

0x0 10y ago
I think they've solved the battle mechanics very elegantly by avoiding direct PvP, likely on purpose, to prevent too many real-world confrontations escalating.
kevindong 10y ago
My experience (being on a college campus, however dead it may be during the summer) has been the opposite. People who otherwise wouldn't talk to each other are openly walking up to each other to talk about Pokemon Go. A coworker of mine and his girlfriend have also started hanging out (as in, indoors and double dating by not playing Pokemon together) with another couple they met while hunting for Pokemon.
2bitencryption 10y ago
You know that one mobile "space pilot" game? The one where everyone's phone displays different elements of a fictional spacecraft, with buttons labeled "Power Overdrive" and knobs and levers to pull with crazy names? And players get instructions they need to shout to other players, like "Whoever has the Neutrino Ray, set it to 4!" Basically, the game forces one big fun social interaction by requiring players to exchange information to stay alive. How could this work with Pokemon Go? I don't know. Currently the only social exchanges are "There's a Blastoise over here!" (which is pretty darn cool). But maybe more could be done. Some type of puzzle where one person in an area is designated the "Puzzle leader," and gets to rely information to other people...

blhack 10y ago

I think that the biggest feature that Pokemon Go will add, that will hopefully come soon, is the ability to broadcast your position. This is something that I wish ingress had done. The game is a multiplayer game, there is no doubt about that. I'd love to be able to open map map, see that some of my friends are over playing at $foo location, and then go meet them there.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Ingress had at least a proxy for that - an in-game chat with distance-filtering, i.e. you could limit messages you see to sources closer than X kilometers. As for third-party tools, someone somehow made a player tracker once; I think it used changes in portal owners to narrow down your location.
- blhack 10y ago
  I think that the player tracker could get you banned from the game, though. It technically violates the ToS.
rezashirazian 10y ago
I built a chat app for pokemon go that allows people within a 5 mile radius to chat anonymously. It also has a crowd sourced pokemon spawn map where people can broadcast and located pokemons within their vicinity. Once I can get Apple to stop rejecting it I'll post a link.

melling 10y ago

So, do we have an entirely new class of games/apps that are about to appear? Like Pokémon go but for ...

rezashirazian 10y ago
Yes. I bet you plenty of companies are already on it as we speak.

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kevindong 10y ago

The dropoff in interest has already started. I pretty much stopped playing last week. I got to level 14 and the amount of grinding required was just ridiculous (the amount of XP you earn per action does not increase as you level up meanwhile the XP required to level up goes up exponentially). The bugginess of the game really did not help. The dropoff in interest has already, objectively speaking, started[0]. It's currently (as of July 22) 66% of its peak (per Google Trends). In my personal experience, interest on my college campus has already subsided. It's not completely dead, mind you, but the hype is over. [0]: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pokemon%20go&date=today%201-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pokemon%20go&date=to...

plet 10y ago

mp3geek 10y ago

How does the numbers stack up between the downloads on Google play vs Apple?

meerita 10y ago

A game can't have everything the first day of launch. They released this to test it against the market. Now that it is a success, changes will come to increase retention and purchases. Now the next biggest events will be promoted also with Pokemon things to do in the place, like "get this rare pokemon on the Vegas Electronic Event. The game is a real success and the mechanics described by Richard Bartle proved that people loves to collect, it is the Diogenes syndrome but in mobile version.

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Bonsailinse 10y ago

These numbers are probably the reason why niantic was totally caught by surprise and have these massive server issues. I really don't like to see the app offline every time I have to go for a longer walk, but hey, I take it easy and wait for either niantiv upgrading their ressources or the userbase to shrink, which shouldn't take too long imo.

xlayn 10y ago

As time pass there are more iDevices.... so the number can be irrelevant. So maybe a percentage as download/devices?