A Flash in the Pan: The Decline of Pokemon Go

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Pokemon Go’s daily user count is rapidly dropping. Why the decline of Pokemon Go?

Pokemon Go was the hottest craze summer 2016. It immediately became a mobile phone phenomenon after release in early July 2016. Millennials stared at their phones looking for Pokemon littered parks and shopping centers. After a strong start, the amount of daily users is falling.

Pokemon Go logo

Facebook groups about the app sprung up immediately. Group members shared prime locations for catching Pokemon and created community events where members could go out Pokemon hunting together. According to the blog Social Times, one event from a Facebook page in San Francisco drew 9,000 gamers. Events ranged from bar crawls to flash mobs to group museum outings.

 

According to Forbes, at its peak, Pokemon Go had around 45 million daily users. Today, only two months later, it has around 30 million. Why the decline of Pokemon Go?

 

Pokemon Go experienced such a successful start because it played on twentysomethings’ nostalgia of the game. Once you get past the nostalgia, there’s not much actual substance.

 

The goal of the game is to catch every type of Pokemon, but that’s about it. Users venture out into other communities to find more rare Pokemon, but eventually you have to keep going farther away from home to find more rare Pokemon. Sure, there are Pokemon all around you, but they’re the same type of Pokemon that you found on day one. You don’t want or need eight Pidgeys.

 

So you’re tired of driving long distances just find more Pokemon. What else is there to do? Some locations are Pokemon gyms where players can battle Pokemon, but you have to be at the actual location of a gym to battle. So you walk a mile to the nearest park hoping to battle Pokemon only to find out that the opponent is level 3,000 while you are level 500. If you’re guaranteed to lose, battling isn’t too much fun.

 

The app’s creator, Niantic, claims that they are planning to enhance the gaming experience, but they haven’t told us how. Hopefully, they can hold on a bit longer, otherwise Pokemon Go may be remembered as a short craze in summer 2016.

See what Fortune has to see about the topic here.

Liz Farrar
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