
Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/pokemon-go-sheds-more-than-10m-users/
======
wcarss
The loss and subsequent banning of maps and map users made nearly everyone I
know stop playing, especially in the total absence of an official replacement
or a compelling reason to continue.

Hearing my map ding was enough cause to make me leap out of my chair and run
to the nearby park at midnight to catch something I wanted, and there'd
usually be the usual lure-users and a few map-users out there at the same
time. Once I was out, I'd play for a while, hit a gym or two, maybe finish an
egg, and go home. This was still really fun when it was disabled.

Without the map, there's no reason for me to leave my house. There's no group
of people at work who stand up when a Blastoise is announced into our #pokemon
channel, sending us all on a brief Pokemon/coffee walk down the road.

That's all on top of the poor quality of the game, which the maps and
community had overcome.

Niantic being selfish and not understanding their own game or the culture
around it seems to have squandered one of the greatest opportunities a company
has ever had.

(I get that the maps were spamming them, but that's a technical challenge. A
bunch of well funded ex-googlers ought to be up to the challenge of
scaling/handling unexpected load for a chance like this.)

~~~
cheald
This is on the money. Niantic made it harder and more frustrating to play
their game, and people stopped playing it. They have utterly failed to
understand what their playerbase wants, and people are falling off.

The maps really drove it into overdrive, especially with the presence of
"nests", because it allowed people to figure out where they needed to be, and
would then congregate there. By taking out the maps, Niantic has turned their
scavenger hunt into a scratch-off lotto ticket - don't bother trying to plan
or play with any strategy, just wander around aimlessly until your phone
buzzes. Who wants to do that?

It's a shame, because at its core there is a compelling scavenger hunt that
generated a truly unique social phenomenon, and it's very sad to see Niantic
just piss that away. The game just isn't worth putting any effort into - they
broke the effort-reward cycle.

~~~
derefr
> By taking out the maps, Niantic has turned their scavenger hunt into a
> scratch-off lotto ticket ... they broke the effort-reward cycle

You're phrasing this almost as if Niantic wanted there to be third-party
mapping apps in the first place, and then changed its mind.

The game Niantic released doesn't have mapping, and didn't intend to have an
open API. This can be read as an implicit statement that the game _design_
that Niantic thought people would enjoy playing, doesn't involve knowing where
pokemon are.

Presuming there was at least one actual game designer involved in creating the
game, there's likely already _some_ sort of effort-reward cycle built into the
game that _doesn 't involve_ mapping. It might not be one _you_ like playing,
but that probably means that _you_ were not the audience Niantic designed (and
playability-tested) the game for.

~~~
maxsilver
> there's likely already some sort of effort-reward cycle built into the game
> that doesn't involve mapping.

You would think that, but there _really_ isn't. It's easier to see if you load
up the game for yourself.

Sure, it's true that Niantic didn't plan or intend for usable maps to exist.
But it's _also_ true that the game is effectively unplayable without the maps.

The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively
given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's
doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some
extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively
> given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's
> doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some
> extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

I don't understand how that follows. How did Niantic give _any_ of its
userbase over to Nintendo? Pokemon Go does very little to advance the Nintendo
games - there's literally zero upsell involved (or even any cross-
advertising).

You could say that the Pokemon Go brand might sell some extra copies of Sun &
Moon in November, but I'd argue that the effect runs mostly in the other
direction. Pokemon Go was successful _because_ of Nintendo's Pokemon brand.
And to at least a degree, that capital is finite (people's appetite for
Pokemon-related games is a finite resource, and it's possible that
overexposure to Pokemon Go could make them less excited about the upcoming 3DS
games).

~~~
SerLava
There have been a lot of Pokemon core game sales and 3DS sales. That's what
he's talking about. People are interested in the original games again.

------
calbear81
I am a semi-active Pokemon Go player in the SF Bay Area and I can tell it's
definitely died down over the last few weeks. In the beginning, every
Friday/Saturday/Sunday night, the whole downtown area would be lured up and
people would be out mingling and catching pokemon in the local park. This past
weekend, there were only a few lures and a few diehards milling around the
park. There's a few dynamics at play based on personal experience:

1) Many players don't care about the gym battling system and just wanted to
"collect" Pokemon. Once you've collected most of the ones in your area, you're
going to get bored catching the same pidgeys, weedles, and rats/bats. My SO
and I have gone to different areas to catch other Pokemon but you just need to
go a few times and now we both have "most" of the common Pokemon. We're not
hardcore enough to want to spend more time hunting the last few missing in our
deck.

2) The lack of support and response from Niantic when the game was badly
broken turned off a lot of casual players. Hardcore players will forgive them
but casual players especially on iOS expect a lot more polish and "it just
works" from a top selling game. I wonder how much of a fit Nintendo threw when
this happened given they are a partial owner/investor in "The Pokemon
Company".

3) The gym battling system mechanics are not great. You basically can throw
bodies at a gym until you knock them down. There's no P2P battling which would
make it more exciting since the gym AI is predictable in their attack patterns
and most players know the dodge, attack, dodge routine now. The whole premise
is to take down a gym, revive your Pokemon, collect potions/revives, do it all
over again.

~~~
SyneRyder
Your point #1 is spot on. The gyms killed it for me because it made Pokémon Go
really competitive. The atmosphere of random people being friendly to each
other & exploring their city together quickly changed to people insulting and
taunting each other for being on opposing teams. I'm still refusing to join a
team because of it.

What I enjoyed was the "Geocaching" aspects - going outside with friends,
helping each other search together, visiting new places I normally wouldn't go
to (ie new Pokéstops, catching a train to new suburbs to explore what's
there). I also like the fitness aspect, ie tracking how far I've walked. But
Pokéwalks with friends aren't fun when someone is more interested in defending
a specific gym, rather than Pokémon being an excuse to hang out and go for a
walk by the lake together.

I've spent more on this than any mobile game (probably $15 - $25, I kept
needing to upgrade my Pokémon storage and bag storage). But I uninstalled the
app earlier this week.

~~~
calbear81
I feel like this is the aspect I enjoy the most too. It would be great if they
added "Journeys" which are planned routes with Pokestops and tasks to complete
or even like a scavenger hunt you can play with friends with medals/prizes for
completion. The other thing that would make the game way more fun for me is
global events for all players like a sea monster is attacking the waterfront,
all trainers head there to defeat it for a special badge. It's brining in the
dungeon raid co-op aspect into the game.

~~~
SyneRyder
The 'global event' is a really interesting idea to me - it's easier to meet &
chat to new people when you've just had a shared experience, more so if it's
co-op rather than competitive.

Wow, if Niantic had an event on the waterfront, and they happened to get city
permission so when the sea monster is defeated it triggers a local fireworks
display, that could be really interesting - and newsworthy. And no doubt the
local cafes and food vendors would be selling out again afterwards too if you
can create an event like that....

~~~
calbear81
These global events I think are key to keep things fresh. They just need
background notifications to alert players who are in a specific area. The
global events don't have to be a big new Pokemon monster but that would
definitely be fun to show all the trainers who are currently battling the
monster. There should be a time limit on when you have to defeat the monster
to earn the prize which encourages people to get out there.

There could also be fun challenges like "Magikarp invasion!" \- 400 Magikarp
have invaded Fisherman's Wharf. They need to all be caught in the next hour or
else they'll threaten native species.

Create some fun quests and challenges and randomize where they spawn and make
them time limited.

~~~
Chronic9q
Not everyone lives in SF.

~~~
calbear81
Global events just need to be triggered based on their geodata. They can even
use dynamic triggers like if a lot of players are online, find a central
location to spawn a Quest/Challenge and alert everyone in the app.

------
djsumdog
I feel like this is a case, "No shit, what did you think would happen?" It is
a free-to-play game after all.

I'd suggest watching the developer of Braid talk about free-to-play games. He
compares them to 90's syndicated TV shows, each one being independent and
leaving you with a cliffhanger prior to each commercial break. When HBO
started producing long running series that would eventually be released on VHS
and DVD, you saw much more long arching story.

Even though Pokemon Go has a lot more going for it than many other free-to-
play games, it still works on a model that limits how far you can go without
buying stuff. That's how those game companies make money.

I met a Pikpok dev once who said 80% of people delete their games once you
can't really advance without buying stuff. A couple spend $80 ~ $200 (more
than they would on a traditional title) and a few, the "Whales," would dump
$2k upwards into these games. They depended on those players to make the games
profitable.

Free-to-play are like quarter-based arcade games .. on your phone. They're a
pretty big step backwards in gaming.

~~~
vlunkr
While I mostly agree, I wouldn't say they are entirely a step backwards.
Pokemon Go broke the mold and did something that would not really work on any
past platform.

~~~
tux1968
I have never played Pokemon Go, but i'm curious what mold it broke? Ingress
was around a long time previously and as far as i've surmised contains
essentially all the features of Go plus some more. What it lacked was the
compelling and nostalgic branding that Pokemon has. Genuinely curious.

~~~
icefox
Shops paid to put lures out, it was a way to get advertisers to pay for the
game, but without spam ads.

------
BryantD
Note: still the top grossing app in the iOS App Store.

As always, don't forget to put the scary raw numbers into context. 12 million
out of 45 million means they've retained 73% of their user base month over
month. We can't derive actual retention numbers from that because new users,
etc. but 15% is great month over month retention for a F2P mobile game. Assume
Pokemon Go is doing that. That would mean 6.5M of their current user base
stuck around since the beginning of August, and they picked up just under 25M
new users in one month.

I dunno about you, but I'd be really pleased if my new game got 25M new users
in the second month after release. Not as good as the 45M I got in the first
month, but that's not rationally sustainable.

Time spent in game dropping is bad. DAU dropping is bad. I wouldn't spin this
as good news. Niantic could absolutely be managing live operations much
better. But click bait is click bait.

If you're sitting here saying that it's failing because everyone you know
stopped playing, you need to figure out how to make your mental model explain
why it's still top grossing.

~~~
wsc981
In august the game became available in Thailand, a potential huge new user
base. Perhaps the game opened up in other parts of the world as well. This
could mean the percentage of users playing dropped by a much bigger amount in
existing countries.

~~~
BryantD
Thailand is not a big mobile game marketplace in comparison to the US, China,
Japan, or Europe.

However, you make a good point -- the numbers lose even more context when
they're not broken down by country, particularly when the launch was
staggered. E.g., Pokemon Go launched in Japan on July 21st, which means any
numbers captured at the beginning of August reflect initial launch volumes.

------
Brendinooo
Anecdotal, but I'm still playing pretty regularly and still greatly enjoy the
game.

I like having the app open when I'm on a run. I can hatch eggs, take a
breather at gyms, and pick up a lot of Pokemon. Tracking was never an integral
part of my game experience, which is maybe why I didn't feel as affected by
the changes.

I never completely understood the complaints. Niantic has a right to make a
(free-to-play!) game and don't owe us anything. And since this is a dev-
centric community, many of us can appreciate how stressed out Niantic
engineers probably are right now after a difficult launch. I get that maps
were cool - I have a nice Dragonite to show for it, but it always felt like a
hack that was going to go away. The old tracking system was better, but I'd
rather have the performance of August than the tracking system of July.

Losing users was probably inevitable. This game was _everywhere_ in the news,
so I'm sure plenty of people tried it out and realized it wasn't for them.
Combine that with people who miss their maps as well as maybe adjusting the
numbers after catching bots, and that probably covers most of the numbers.

~~~
mahranch
You say tracking was never an integral part of your game experience and then
say you don't understand the complaints. Heh. That's what a vast majority of
people are complaining about because tracking _was_ an integral part of their
game experience. That's the reason so many of us liked the game to begin with.

Imagine if a game like Soul Caliber or Street Fighter took away the fighting
aspect of their game. You may think the main fun part of soul caliber is
unlocking stronger/hidden weapons, or selecting the right match-up in street
fighter, but a majority of people enjoy the combat aspect.

I continued to play after they took out tracking because I thought it was only
temporary. Now I finally realize it's permanent so I haven't logged in to
Pokemon Go in 7 days now.

------
NDizzle
They drastically changed some algorithms to (seemingly) make more money.

They made the pokemon break free MUCH more often with the update about 10 days
ago. You now have to use way more pokeballs to capture things. So much to the
point that it's unfun. I don't live near a pokestop so I can't top up quickly.

Another thing they did was make it so the pokemon disappear if a range check
puts you far enough away from the point of initial contact. Combine that
together and nobody can play the game in the car anymore, even if you're not
driving!

So they spent a bunch of time changing existing features to be less fun
without adding any new features that are fun. Not a good idea.

I have been playing with my wife and two of my kids. We all stopped playing
because it's simply not fun anymore.

~~~
mjevans
The update also (at least on my Nexus 6P) made GPS related issues dramatically
worse; it's like they don't comprehend that in a place with a lot of tall
buildings or trees you're not going to get a 'solid' GPS lock a majority of
the time.

Combine that with a UI popup (mid capture interaction no less) that steels
input focus (it stops your ball toss), telling the user something they
LITERALLY have no control over fixing, and quite possibly ruining your chance
at capturing a more rare Pokemon and it is insanely frustrating.

~~~
riskable
The GPS issues have nothing to do with getting a GPS fix. It's just a plain
ol' bug. My GPS is spot-on when using any app other than Pokémon Go which
pretty regularly states that the GPS isn't working when I'm holding my phone
in my hands to an open sky with no clouds.

It doesn't matter _what_ I'm doing or what device I'm using it always shows
that GPS error message every 30 seconds to 1 minute.

~~~
squeaky-clean
> The GPS issues have nothing to do with getting a GPS fix. It's just a plain
> ol' bug.

GPS on phones aren't that accurate, especially downtown, but most applications
will filter the data because of that. Ever use Google Maps for directions and
make a turn different from what the app is telling you to do? Your car icon
will continue down the "correct" path for 15-30 seconds before re-adjusting to
the new route. This actually happens all the time, it's just more likely that
your GPS is misreporting you as 20m east instead of you taking a different
turn, so the app holds off on updating the display until it is more sure.

So it's a combination of the two factors. But most apps handle it muuuuch
better than P:GO does.

Here's a link I was able to find on running apps specifically. Apps that deal
with you being on foot will obviously have a harder time determining exactly
where you are, as opposed to apps for driving where you're moving faster, in a
straight line, and down a grid of streets.

[http://radianttap.com/blog/2012/comparing-accuracy-of-the-
gp...](http://radianttap.com/blog/2012/comparing-accuracy-of-the-gps-based-
running-apps/)

~~~
ex3ndr
May be Niantic&co decided to disable google optimized gps location services to
not give them such data?

~~~
lamontcg
Possibly had more to do with blocking GPS cheaters?

------
Mister_Snuggles
I hope they add some more stuff to the game to keep it fresh and interesting.
As it is, I've caught Pokemon, won Gym Battles, lost Gym Battles, evolved
Pokemon, visited hundreds of Pokestops, and Hatched Eggs. I think I've touched
on every game mechanic, though I haven't caught every Pokemon.

I'd like to see some things that allow the players more ways to change the map
in a way that interacts with other players. Right now that's only done by Gym
Battles and by placing Lures in Pokestops.

Some of the ideas I've got are:

\- Some way for players to place markers on the map to indicate that Pokemon
have seen, rally players to a spot, etc.

\- A way for players to create new Pokestops.

\- Some kind of quest mechanic where players could create quests and embark on
quests created by others.

All of these could be tied to the in-game purchase system. They'd need some
way to prevent abuse of it, of course.

The biggest problem I have is that it feels very much like a single-player
game, and a fairly shallow one at that, with some very minor multiplayer
elements.

------
jedberg
With winter, and the colder weather, approaching, they really better figure
out some game mechanics that you can do inside at home, or that user number is
going to drop like crazy.

I've been saying this for a while -- it was fun to play for a few days, but I
live in a suburb. I have to walk at least .5 miles to get to a Pokestop and
they never spawn near my house.

I'll still play when I go to new places, but that's about it.

Now, if there were some way for my wife and I to battle each other at home,
that would be whole different ball game.

~~~
hackernews2000
The weather is going to get warmer on the opposite side of the world from you.

~~~
jedberg
True but there are a lot fewer people on that side of the world, and even
fewer still who would be considered "1st world" enough to have the spare time
and the smartphones with data plans necessary to play.

~~~
hackernews2000
Your stereotypes are disgusting. My working class relatives in Brazil are
playing it. We don't live in huts.

------
timmytokyo
I think it just comes down to the game being not very good. It's not really
designed for retention. Once you've caught the Pokemons you care about,
there's not much left to do. Gyms are not an interesting mechanic, and there's
no other way to interact with other players in the game. Basically, Niantic
put out a half-baked game, which was rapidly successful only because it built
on the combination of a fantastic idea (AR gaming) and a cherished IP
(Pokemon).

------
betadreamer
I still play regular but it is getting pretty mundane. But that is not because
pokevision and other 3rd party was banned. In fact they were supposed to be
banned a lot earlier. The map users (myself included) will never pay for
pokemongo but might pay for the map. This is not a good business model for
them and in fact it defeats the purpose. Instead of hunting or seeking you are
basically shopping.

The reason why it is getting boring is actually something else... it is in the
flaw of their game design. This game is extremely biased toward people who
live around water with high density such as Santa Monica and San Francisco.
You can catch Dragonite and bunch of starters there. But most people instead
will catch eevee and growlithe at the best. Basically after a while you finish
catching every pokemon around you and there is nothing else to do other than
fight gyms. But gyms are so easy to beat that you don't have much incentive to
defend it.

~~~
fl0wenol
Agreed. The process by which you fortify gyms is broken. Leveling up your gym
is very time-consuming and can too easily be undone, especially by other
players nearby. There needs to be a better way to handle gyms and battles that
scales with local user activity... perhaps a shunt to a PvP mode that grants
the winner or the winner's color a certain amount of exclusive access time to
fortify.

The game is not similar enough to Ingress for the existing tit-for-tat ideas
to work. Fire XMPs <=> Gym Battle; Add Resonators to Portal <=> Put Champion
on Gym. Where's the equivalent of shields or key-based recharging at a
distance? Why can't I buff my pokemon stationed on a gym (or the gym itself)
with items after an alert that the gym is being battled?

~~~
betadreamer
This is a great idea. They should have an item that buffs the gym for 24hr.
This will create a nice mechanics where you want to put your pokemon on these
buffed gym (more incentive to train) and it will be challenging to beat in
general. Players that beats the gym also gets more XP.

------
hkmurakami
No matter what happens to Pokemon Go, Nintendo has proved to the world that
its IP is immensely powerful and valuable in the mobile age.

That's a nice weapon to have to shut up "analysts" who always want them to
take the path to short term gains.

I remain bearish on Pokemon go and bullish on Nintendo.

~~~
jmcdiesel
Its not their IP though, is it?

Its the Pokemon Company, and nintendo only gets a small percentage of the
licensing...

~~~
stormbrew
Nintendo owns 33% of TPC. But they also own some amount of Creatures Inc,
which owns 33% of TPC (Gamefreak is the other third share). So it's not clear
how much control they have over pokemon, but it may in fact be a controlling
interest. Never mind that not all shares are voting shares.

I'd be pretty surprised if Nintendo weren't at least de facto in control of
Pokemon, personally.

~~~
hkmurakami
In addition, Pokemon is not the only strong IP that Nintendo has in its
arsenal.

I was in the audience at a Hironobu Sakaguchi interview recently, and one of
the things that has stayed with me was that Nintendo told the FF team back in
the 90's, "You need to take better care of your characters." Nintendo has
certainly done that for itself over the course of many decades, and it's
always paid off for them despite many short term troubles they've encountered.

------
kafkaesq
As with with any other dopamine-jerking drug -- first there's a rush; then a
plateau; then a refactory period. And just like the more familiar (street-
level) drug dealers, the creators are going to have to think of something
stronger, longer-lasting or at least more novel-seaming in order to maintain
market share. Or cede their turf.

~~~
AJ007
I thought the spike in usage from the beginning was a contrarian indicator for
long term popularity. The rapid viral growth clearly saturated the potential
playerbase within the first week.

Rapid market saturation means you do not have time to test and optimize for
long term user retention. Hypothetically you could get all of the variables
correct on day one, but unlikely.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Didn't they have a beta though? They should have expanded that.

------
NamTaf
The game consists of 2 mechanics: 1) Collect everything 2) Battle gyms for
arbitrary cred

at the moment, both oppose each other because the maps people make to make #1
easier, make it easier for a subset of people to dominate #2 easier. By
removing the maps that make #2 so unbalanced, #1 becomes a repetitive chore.

There's literally nothing more to the game than those two mechanics. There's
no end goal like the other pokemon games. There's no higher goal to work
towards from capturing gyms and holding areas.

It's no surprise that the game is dying. Either you collect the 80% that are
easy to find and then it just becomes a huge chore without the necessary tools
to find the last 20%, or you powerlevel up to fight in gyms for a bit and
then... what exactly?

Niantic should've taken another 3-6 months of heavy dev time to really polish
it and add more depth to it. Create a higher purpose for holding gyms. Create
a more compelling search mechanism that doesn't allow maps but then doesn't
make the last 20% of the search such a huge, completely random-chance chore.

There needs to be more to the game than those two mechanics and every moment
it's released but there's not, it just withers. No amount of patching in an
IV% calculator by visiting your 'trainer' will help that, because it still
just relies on those two very broken pillars.

~~~
vacri
This was the problem with Niantic's earlier game _Ingress_. It was fun to play
while levelling up, which masked some of the repetitive nature of the game,
but once you reached the highest level, there was nothing else to do except
keep doing what you were already doing.

The problem with all of these kinds of games (MMOs in particular) is that
people consume content far faster than it can be created. It's quite difficult
to create self-sustaining content.

~~~
NamTaf
MMOs, and to an extent all multiplayer games, gain their complexity and
replayability through PvP interaction (when I say 'v' I don't mean necessarily
through conflict interaction, I mean also through cooperative interaction).
Ultima Online is still paraded as one of the best of the genre because it had
such high freedom in how players interacted with each other. WoW gained a huge
level of depth from how it was set up for big, complex groups of players
working togther with the whole raid boss thing.

Even Dota and LoL gain their complexity not through the game (I mean they both
have 1 map) but through the interaction that happens with 5v5 gameplay. Quake
and CS are the same.

The problem with Pokemon Go is that there's no player interaction beyond gym
battles, which are just about as minimial as player interaction can get and
could almost be replaced by NPC trainers that you periodically have to beat to
kick them out before they reset again.

Had they had more emphasis on player encounters, Pokemon Go would not be
burning out. Trading of pokemon, player vs player battles outside of gyms, a
more meaningful gym possession metagame (think Planetside). An item meta-
economy where you can find and trade items that you can pick up around the
place randomly and which give you bonuses (to catch rates, to pokemon power,
etc. etc. - there's heaps of scope here). This is all roughly mapped out in
MMOs, so it's a case of implementation not invention.

Patching this in now is far less effective since they've burnt much of the
goodwill that players give them when they first start playing. For every
player that'll return, 10 won't bother no matter what you do to the game.

------
overgard
I'm not an expert on this, but, those numbers don't seem awful to me. I
realize not everyone started the game at the exact same time, but retaining
75% of your users a month later seems pretty good. Pretty much any mobile game
is going to have some churn, and given their stratospheric launch it's not
like they were realistically going to grow. Given the (MAJOR!) quality
problems they've had, they can probably stem the bleeding quite a bit if they
just fix those things.

~~~
mahranch
Mobile games like puzzle and dragons have never had a month where they did not
_add_ to its player base. If it lost 10% of its players in a single month,
everyone would be fired. I'm not joking.

Now before you or anyone says that Pokemon is larger, it's not. Puzzle and
Dragons might not be as large in America (it's close though), but in Japan,
10% of their entire population plays the game. More people play that game,
probably 3 times over, than play Pokemon Go.

------
OpenDrapery
Anyone remember "Drawing with Friends"? It was all the rage for about 15
minutes.

~~~
turingbook
It is Foursquare on steroids.

~~~
lispython
Nice metaphor.

------
oneloop
I've been saying that Pokemon Go is going to go the same way as the Kinect and
the Wii. Fun for the novelty, but beyond that the fundamentals are very bad.
Therefore, once the novelty starts to wear off....

~~~
mkaziz
I thought the Wii had great fundamentals. I loved playing a lot of the core
Wii games.

~~~
dogma1138
How many of the core wii games used motion controls? Even the big Nintendo IP
games used primarily a classical control scheme if not exclusively.

~~~
minimaxir
The top-selling Wii games were the Wii Sports games + spinoffs, almost all of
which were primarily motion-control:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_Wii_vid...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_Wii_video_games)

~~~
rtkwe
I think those sales numbers are skewed in favor of Wii Sports because it was
bundled with the console the same way The Lab is for the Vive.

~~~
minimaxir
True; the others were not, though. (Except there may have been a SKU with Wii
Sports Resort)

------
kin
It was an awesome phenomena to witness while it lasted. Sadly this is how it
is with most games. People get bored if there's no stream of content to keep
them engaged. Other games stay on top for so long by continuing to have in-
game specials, events, and deals as well as DLC. Everything from Niantic since
release has honestly just been catch-up and bug fixes.

------
technofiend
Unlike the predecessor app there's no strategy to Go and just like the
predecessor app lots of lazy people want to ruin the game for everyone else by
cheating through GPS spoofing, automated game play and data scraping. Not to
mention both games share Niantic's less-than-stellar customer service which
means issues are addressed haphazardly if at all.

The good news is I think the market's broken wide open for another AR app,
hopefully one with more compelling gameplay that isn't structured to be the
next Farmville/Game Of War/whatever in app purchase digital cash cow.

------
CM30
Makes me wonder if some of this was disillusionment after people realised how
unbalanced the game was.

Because at the moment, it's a game that seems designed specifically to reward
city dwellers and punish countryside and suburban folk. If you're in a city,
lots of Pokemon seem to appear because it uses mobile signals to place them.
In the country where you'd expect Pokemon? Nothing. You can have tall grass
for miles, yet get less Pokemon than in a Walmart parking lot.

As a result, a lot of people spent ages wandering around and encountering
nothing. Or maybe just common Pokemon.

The maps helped with this a bit, by giving these people the knowledge to find
the few interesting Pokemon that would spawn before they vanish. But without
them? There's not really a point for most people in these areas to keep
playing. It's a lot of hassle for very little reward.

Niantic didn't seem to want to improve this either. They simply said something
like 'well, you'll just have to move to where the Pokemon are'.

So I wonder if some of the drop may be people living in more remote regions
saying 'sod this' and giving up on the game.

------
jagger27
If there's one thing The Pokemon Company and Gamefreak can do well it's to
iterate. There will always be an opportunity for Nintendo to make an in-house
sequel. Niantic can and should be cut out of the picture in the future.

~~~
echelon
Why should Niantic be cut out? Nintendo owns a (large?) share of them. They
could become a second party, like Retro Studios.

~~~
ben_jones
If Niantic management is responsible (I mean they are but did they make wrong
decisions, or did they make ok decisions in bad circumstances?) you can argue
that keeping that same management involved in a sequel could be detrimental to
the evolution of the game. It also makes it harder to shed the failures of the
first iteration.

Personally I think Niantic's entire team was plain overwhelmed and failed to
adapt. Some decisions were made for money, and you can argue that they were
unnecessary, but their is also no doubt a lot of people worked really hard and
tried their best to make it work. There is of course value in that experience
that can be applied to future iterations.

The future looks great for AR at least.

------
take_it_online
There were so many other ways they could have made money with the scaling
issue they had.

If their servers can not handled the amount of users using the map function to
track pokemon, set this feature as an item. Once a day a user can track
pokemon for 1-2 30min session a day.

Then if users want an extra session to track pokemon, they would only have to
pay a few pokecoins. This way they can please the userbase and easy the
resources used.

------
Semiapies
Some of it is undoubtedly a craze shedding the least-engaged, but I wonder how
much of that could be due to it _being August_ and people not wanting to
traipse around in the height of summer.

I got interested in the game, but I decided to wait a bit as daily high
temperatures hovered at the century mark.

~~~
wvenable
In other places, August is a comfortable time to traipse around compared to
the rest of the year. You want get outdoors when the sun is out and it's warm.

~~~
astrodust
August is turning out to be downright pleasant compared to the hellacious July
we had, but that didn't stop people from mobbing the local Pokestop clusters.

There's a spot downtown here that's so bad they're debating putting up a fence
to contain the players and keep them from interfering with a ferry terminal
that's close by: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-ferry-
terminal...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-ferry-terminal-
pokemon-go-moved-away-1.3705865)

------
120bits
This is what I have noticed in just my friend circle.

I was never an active Pokemon Go player, but few of my friends were really
into the game. Every Friday we would go out for a walk, in near by park and
they will have their phone out and be catching Pokemons. I guess it was just
how much more I can catch thing. They always wanted to get the rares ones. Who
doesn't right? Last 2 weekends I have noticed 2 of my friends didn't care
much. And, slowly, the interest faded away. Now we all going for paint ball.

I don't know if it's Ninatic not coming up with good updates or its just a
common thing with every mobile game. Angry birds, Candy crush and now Pokemon
Go?

~~~
wott
> I was never

> Every Friday we would

> They always wanted

> Last 2 weekends I have noticed 2 of my friends didn't care much. And,
> slowly, the interest faded away.

"Every", "always", "slowly", and the overall feeling of a long tradition.

Er... guys... can you remind us how long this fad lasted? When was it
introduced? 6 years ago? 6 months ago? No, that's 6 weeks ago, men! So, 2
weeks ago was just 4 weeks after the beginning...

Is it the CADT at work, describing an extremely short, transient fling about a
lousy game as a tradition?

I was amazed by people pretending this was (another) revolution in gaming and
life, that allowed them to socialize (ever heard of walking down to your local
bar? apparently not) and to take a walk (wow). And now, just one month after
all that fuss, it's already scrapped and life goes on as it was before that
was a thing. Or was it never a thing and people rushed into making theories
about it without thinking further than their nose? That would be surprising.
Ahem.

~~~
Gargoyle
So, to be clear, you think the basic mechanic of geography based gaming (there
must be a better name for it) is a fad and it's already fading?

I strongly disagree. In my opinion what we just saw was the initial burst of
public enjoyment of that game mechanic, and now that the concept has very
widespread familiarity, the ground is set for better games to come along and
dwarf Pokemon Go.

It actually _was_ a revolutionary moment, but it seems many want to assume the
initial burst was the big bang. I think that's very wrong.

------
StavrosK
I only started playing because my friends did, and the only way for me to
stomach the boring game was to write a bot for it. I enjoyed going around and
getting levels with a bot, trying to figure out how to best evolve my Pokemon
automatically, write inventory management scripts, etc.

After they deleted my account for that (fair enough), I uninstalled the app. I
wasn't going to run around catching and releasing Rattatas all the time, as
the game is one of the most grindy games I've ever seen, but there's pretty
much nothing else to do in the game either.

------
seangrogg
As a developer it was the fact that they were so close to the chest with their
API that ruined it for me. The game had a lot of cool potential and I really
enjoyed it for a while, but eventually it hit the point where there was
backlash from the company for doing anything with their (admittedly non-
public) API.

They should have spent time celebrating what the public was making or even
possibly trying to produce an alternative API optimized for consumption
(instead of blasting their servers with hundreds of fake accounts to get the
necessary data).

------
michaelfindlay
I must admit i played Pokemon Go a little bit, I am sure maybe they could add
more elements as time goes, including player vs player tournaments and
lobbies. Single player mode with a pokemon of your choice with story line
gyms. They just need to re-engage players.

------
unbelievr
On release day, the app itself was great. It had a warmer/colder system with
0-3 paw prints to track down the Pokémons in your vicinity. Hunting down
things you missed was a game in itself. When the servers weren't dying, the
game was quite responsive too.

Fast forward a week, and the warmer/colder system is broken. All the Pokémons
are always 3 steps away, which means somewhere within 1km radius. And you have
15 minutes to find that one you're missing. You can still see them from 100
meters away, and the app is quite responsive when you get close to them. The
downtime is unbearable at times, and people are losing items they paid real
money for due to this.

Then we fast forward two weeks. People have started reverse-engineering the
internal API and are using it to create maps over nearby Pokémons. The
brokenness of the tracking system is acknowledged at some convention (not
publicly on their site), but no promises are made on fixing it. Niantic starts
sending out C&Ds to projects using their APIs, trying to remove bots and
tracking websites. Despite their own tracker being broken. The app is now
limited to communicating once per 10 seconds, and you can only see Pokémons
70m around you.

After successfully hiring a PR manager, Niantic breaks their deafening silence
and tells us that the tracking system will not be fixed. They will replace it
with something better. A new app rolls out, now with request signing to combat
tracking websites. This takes about 5 days to crack before business returns to
usual. People _really_ want to be able to track their Pokémons, and having no
ways to do so put a lot of people off. Closing Pokevision made many of my
friends quit, because to them, Niantic didn't share their concerns at all.

Finally, the tracking system is replaced with a new one. You can now detect
nearby Pokémons up to 200m (vs 1000m before). You still need to get within 70m
of them to actually see them though. Niantic also activate an extra tracking
system in certain American states, as a beta test. This has been active for
about two weeks now without hitting the rest of the player base.
Unfortunately, it is based on Pokestops, which are user-submitted landmarks
from their previous game, Ingress. A lot of places do not have these at all,
or extremely few. This makes the game basically unplayable in rural areas,
where you'll rapidly run out of items or never find anything interesting.

For me, personally, I feel this game has great potential, but I really miss
more openness from Niantic. What are their plans for the future? Which
concerns are they acknowledging? Which are intentional features of the game,
and thus ignored? I think this game basically blew up in their faces, and they
weren't ready to handle the interest. It's sad that they let this chance go,
because I think it will be extremely hard for them to redeem themselves after
this.

------
x1798DE
They don't give raw numbers for engagement / time spent in app, but I sorta
wonder if that's not a bigger factor than actual lost users. When I would walk
around NYC, I would _constantly_ see people playing this game, in the subway,
on the streets, etc. I don't think I've seen anyone playing it _at all_ in the
past few weeks. Totally anecdotal, but it seems like way more than a 25% drop
in people actually actively playing the game.

(Though I don't actually play it - maybe the "active" portion of the game
mechanics has just changed character).

------
dlevine
I played a lot when Pokemon first came out. But it slowly lost its hold - I
found myself gradually playing less and less, and I've pretty much stopped.

I think the problem is that there isn't much keeping people around other than
catching new Pokemon and leveling up. Both of those things get progressively
harder as you go along, removing the incentives to keep playing. Maybe if
there were some sort of quest system (and not the achievements) or real social
mechanic, people would stick around for longer.

------
mahranch
The sad part is that this is going to be used as a case study in the future on
what _not_ to do. I can guarantee it. Every step Niantec has made has been
backwards. From removing tracking to making Pokemon harder to catch. The moves
they have made are frustrating their players and they're jumping ship as a
result.

------
Kapura
Persistent Game Without Endgame Content Loses Users

Film at 11

------
cowholio4
It's still pretty big in Taiwan. All this for a Snorlax!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoYjVTbLWyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoYjVTbLWyo)

[EDIT: Removed pvp mention because I couldn't find a source]

~~~
reustle
Also huge in Bangkok still. I see people with matching Pokemon Go tshirts,
there are loads of lures around Siam in the afternoon, and hundreds of people
camped out all over the malls playing for hours (particularly outside Siam
Paragon).

~~~
wsc981
Then again the game was only introduced in Thailand at the start of august.

------
dom96
I'm honestly surprised that there is still 30M users playing. The original
tracking system they had in the game was fine, it worked well and I mostly
enjoyed playing the game with it. Can anybody shed some light as to why they
removed it?

------
awrightiv
As predicted. The content was too thin, and they're adding more too slowly to
keep up with demand. See also: World of Warcraft as an example of a product
with a similar problem, albeit a much longer lifecycle.

------
FollowSteph3
Wait until school starts...

------
Wheaties466
I'm sure the ban wave of legitimate players interest has died down.

------
IhateMicrosoft
I was banned for using a 'map' as this violated the terms of service. And this
left me with no other way to play the game but to violate the terms of
service. So you know what - I don't play anymore and Niantic created that
situation; not me.

What did they think I would do if they left me without a way to play without
violating the 'ToS?'

------
placeybordeaux
They released too early with too few low value features.

------
Khelavaster
Pokemon Go used luster purge!

------
TheOneTrueKyle
Not everyone is going to be a master

