Category: Pokemon Go

For those of you who play Pokemon Go, be on the look out for a sizable update coming to the game.  The update is a combination of new features and refinements to improve the game play and performance of the popular game.  The most notable new feature is the Buddy Pokemon addition.  Here you will be able to choose a Pokemon that you have captured as your buddy.  They will walk with you and be a part of your game avatar and you can earn Candy with your Buddy Pokemon by walking with them.  Not only does it add a new element of game play but it brings a bit more personalization as you can have your favorite Pokemon as part of your avatar in the game.

If you are a Pokemon Go player, congratulations!  You and the other players of the game have collectively walked the distance from Earth to Pluto.  For those that are curious, that is 4.6 billion kilometers.  The staggering number was released amongst other trinkets of information from Niantic, the developer of the game, as they announced it was coming to the Apple Watch yesterday at Apple’s event and on their blog.

Pokémon GO surpassed 500 million downloads around the world and players have collectively walked 4.6 billion kilometers, which is the distance from Earth to Pluto.

Even if you take out the distanced walked playing the game, the fact that is has 500 million downloads at this point is equally as staggering for a different reason.

In the first month since its release, Pokémon Go has hit the lofty number of 100 million.  That’s the number of installs that the augmented reality game has seen on Android and it is only going to climb.  The game has been a huge hit world wide with countless photos of parks and urban areas filled with people young and old with their phones in hand trying to catch them.  Whether you “get it” or not doesn’t matter:  The fact is that the game is hugely successful and for the developer, Niantic, it has been hugely lucrative.  In app purchases are rumored to be in the $10 million per day range for them.  They, clearly, caught them all.

If there was any doubt to the popularity of Pokemon Go in your mind, you can comfortably put them away.  The listing for the hugely popular game was updated in the Play Store and now indicates that over 50 million downloads of the app has happened in just the first 20 days the app has been available.  Keep in mind that it isn’t even rolled out globally just yet so these are staggering numbers by any measure.