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Do you know how those estimates are made? As someone who only passively follows some Pokemon news it was obvious that Pokemon Go would be absolutely huge on lau

Do you know how those estimates are made? As someone who only passively follows some Pokemon news it was obvious that Pokemon Go would be absolutely huge on launch. It was all over facebook, youtube, reddit etc since the day it was announced. I don't think I've ever seen so much hype for a game, including major AAA titles. It seem strange to hear that no-one in their right mind would think it would happen.

itcmcgrath 10y ago
Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch. The Niantic team did incredible things given the instant historic success that became Pokemon Go.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  Sorry if I implied you did something wrong, not my intention at all. I'm just curious how someone comes up with an estimation at all for a game that doesn't have pre-orders, and where similar games don't already exist.
  - itcmcgrath 10y ago
    They ran a closed beta.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch. The generic 1X, 5X and 50X are hard to understand in this context I think. Pokemon is so popular it's very difficult in imaging what the real numbers actually are. For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million). I also feel like the 1X, 5X and 50X number placeholders are useless in this conversation because it doesn't give a sense of scale at all.
  - itcmcgrath 10y ago
    "For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million)." Given no app had ever done this in history over the first few weeks, yet alone on launch day with no marketing, I doubt it.
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      There was no marketing? It was being talked about everywhere. If they didn't spend any money on marketing then good for them! But in all seriousness this is Pokemon; they sold over 3 million copies of a remake of a game on a niche portable console in just 3 days; elevating its brand to an open platform for FREE that can be downloaded and installed on theoretically, what, a billion or more devices? Seems incredibly doable for Pokemon. Few other brands could do the same. Even Mario wouldn't be able to come close to competing with Pokemon's brand power. I would be very interested in the real numbers :)
      - itcmcgrath 10y ago
        How about this - Pokemon search trend for the last 5 years: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon If this doesn't clearly show how crazy this growth was compared to what anyone was expecting, I'm not sure we're operating in the same plane.
        BinaryIdiot 10y ago
        I don't see how that data couldn't be used to argue either of our points (in fact I feel like you could make a strong case for my previous post using this very link). Ultimately though this conversation is a bit vapid without actual numbers which is a bit of a disappointment. Oh well.
  - alasdair_ 10y ago
    The US has roughly 330 million people in it. "Many hundreds of millions" implies at least three of them. I would not expect the entire population of the US to be playing on day one, especially the roughly 50% of them that don't even own a phone.

itcmcgrath 10y ago

Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch. The Niantic team did incredible things given the instant historic success that became Pokemon Go.

devilsavocado 10y ago
Sorry if I implied you did something wrong, not my intention at all. I'm just curious how someone comes up with an estimation at all for a game that doesn't have pre-orders, and where similar games don't already exist.
- itcmcgrath 10y ago
  They ran a closed beta.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch. The generic 1X, 5X and 50X are hard to understand in this context I think. Pokemon is so popular it's very difficult in imaging what the real numbers actually are. For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million). I also feel like the 1X, 5X and 50X number placeholders are useless in this conversation because it doesn't give a sense of scale at all.
- itcmcgrath 10y ago
  "For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million)." Given no app had ever done this in history over the first few weeks, yet alone on launch day with no marketing, I doubt it.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    There was no marketing? It was being talked about everywhere. If they didn't spend any money on marketing then good for them! But in all seriousness this is Pokemon; they sold over 3 million copies of a remake of a game on a niche portable console in just 3 days; elevating its brand to an open platform for FREE that can be downloaded and installed on theoretically, what, a billion or more devices? Seems incredibly doable for Pokemon. Few other brands could do the same. Even Mario wouldn't be able to come close to competing with Pokemon's brand power. I would be very interested in the real numbers :)
    - itcmcgrath 10y ago
      How about this - Pokemon search trend for the last 5 years: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon If this doesn't clearly show how crazy this growth was compared to what anyone was expecting, I'm not sure we're operating in the same plane.
      - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
        I don't see how that data couldn't be used to argue either of our points (in fact I feel like you could make a strong case for my previous post using this very link). Ultimately though this conversation is a bit vapid without actual numbers which is a bit of a disappointment. Oh well.
- alasdair_ 10y ago
  The US has roughly 330 million people in it. "Many hundreds of millions" implies at least three of them. I would not expect the entire population of the US to be playing on day one, especially the roughly 50% of them that don't even own a phone.