Pokemon GO, the most popular mobile game of 2016, has faded as of recently. The part of the game that is ignored is how it’s success has affected the mobile gaming world and Nintendo as a company. Pokemon GO also had a revival attempt that almost worked, but as of September 3rd, 2017, Pokemon GO is almost dead.
Pokemon GO, in the long run, was a success. It produced over $1,000,000,000 dollars in revenue and remodeled mobile gaming as a whole. Its biggest successor was Pokemon Duel, followed by Super Mario Run. Duel was a mobile version of the Pokemon Trading Figures Game, a short term attempt at Pokemon figurines that could be used in a game. Duel brought in a bit of revenue for the company and still holds a decent player base. Run was also decently successful but the pay to play turned many people away.
Pokemon GO has almost died out after serving it’s purpose as a cash generator for Nintendo and Niantic, as well as allowing other Nintendo properties to go mobile. GO tried a revival by releasing Generation 2 Pokemon. This revival worked for about a week and then fizzled out. The next revival attempt was legendary Pokemon, which did work until late August when Pokemon GO faded to the background because of school, just like September of 2016. The game’s updates were undermined by announcements of the new games for Nintendo consoles, Pokemon Ultra Sun & Moon and Pokken DX. Many of the other mobile Nintendo games fizzled as well but they also made a good amount of money. According to Forbes, the games generated $81,426,600 from January 2017 to July 2017. This was a 450 percent boost from January 2016 to July 2016 right before Pokemon GO released.
Pokemon GO got its huge success from bandwagon players, people who never played Pokemon before but GO was the trendy thing to get into. This somewhat carried over into the other games, but not nearly as much. This would obviously hurt sales, but the games didn’t suffer as they still made an acceptable amount of revenue. Nintendo isn’t expecting another Pokemon GO but has high standards for sales on mobile.
Overall, Pokemon GO has shoved Nintendo into the mobile gaming spotlight. This allows Nintendo to revolutionize an entire platform with a handful of games. Pokemon GO, as an experiment, changed the perspective of Nintendo, a video game behemoth, and brought them into the modern era. No longer is mobile just a platform for repetitive games used to pass time but can flourish with full fledged games like Nintendo titles.
