Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
arstechnica.com
Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
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Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#2Some 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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#3I 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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#4I'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....
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#5Some 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.
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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#6I'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....
I thought the Wii had great fundamentals. I loved playing a lot of the core Wii games.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#7I'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....
I thought the Wii had great fundamentals. I loved playing a lot of the core Wii games.
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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#8Anyone remember "Drawing with Friends"? It was all the rage for about 15 minutes.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#9As 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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#10I'm sure the ban wave of legitimate players interest has died down.