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Pokemon Go Becomes Biggest Mobile Game In US History (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Pokemon Go is now the biggest mobile game of all time in the U.S. Not only has it surpassed Twitter's daily users, but it is seeing people spend more time in its app than in Facebook. An earlier report from SimilarWeb says Pokemon Go has surpassed Tinder in terms of installations -- the app surpassed Tinder on July 7th. Today, the tracking firm says Pokemon Go has managed to surpass Twitter in terms of daily active users on Monday. It says almost 6% of the entire U.S. Android population is engaging with the app on a daily basis. A new report from SurveyMonkey intelligence indicated that Pokemon Go has claimed the title "biggest mobile game in U.S. history." The game saw just under 21 million daily active users in the U.S. on Monday. It's reportedly closing in on Snapchat on Android, and could surpass Google Maps on Android as well. According to app store intelligence firm SensorTower, the average iPhone user on iOS spent 33 minutes catching Pokemon, which is more than any other apps it analyzed, including Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and Slither.io. The app with the second-most average usage at 22 minutes, 8 seconds, was Facebook. SurveyMonkey did note that Pokemon Go still falls short of other games when it comes to time spent in games. Game of War sees nearly 2 hours of total daily usage for the average user, while Candy Crush Saga sees daily usage of about 43 minutes. In just two days, Pokemon Go brought Nintendo's market value to $7.5 billion. It's worth noting that it remains to be seen whether or not the game will continue to break records or turn into a ghost town like Nintendo's first mobile game, Miitomo.
Not exactly. You can buy your way out of needing to visit the PokeStops to get more pokeballs and other items you need. You can either drop $10 or hang out in a coffee shop that's close to a pokestop for an hour. That's actually what I really enjoy about the temporary cultural fixation on it. It feels like the first truly social game, not play alone with strangers in the basement.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
I know this might sound crazy, but it is possible to walk past a coffee shop, bakery, and even a fast-food restaurant without stopping to stuff your face with a 1000 calorie snack.
I swear, it's true.
Required reading for internet skeptics
"Pokemon has a limited lifespan" Pretty bold statement about a gaming franchise going as strong as ever 20 years later down the road from where it started. Not bad for a property that is older than the entirety of the XBox existing, and almost as old as the original PlayStation, just to put things into perspective. But yes, let's keep on claiming it has a "limited lifespan"
It'll grow past the game it is and some people will figure out that they enjoy the indirect aspects of the game. Fitness groups, history study groups, faction gatherings, strategy planning groups. Ingress went from a game on the screen to people actually meeting and doing other stuff.
Task Mangler
All the more impressive considering that it's a shit Pokemon game. It's a decent Engress mod, sure, but as a Pokemon game, it's terrible
There are almost no battles. The few that exist are limited to mashing your screen, instead of the turn-based strategy usually associated with Pokemon.
And those scant few battles do not grant experience to your critters. The only way to level them up is to capture a couple dozen of the same 'mon, and grind them into kibble ("candies"). You'll get a couple dozen levels from each candy (current peak levels in the 1000-1500 range). Evolving takes between 15-400 candies. Oh, and the candies are breed specific.
These come to a hilarious point regarding your starter Pokemon. Normally, you pick one of 3 or 4 Pokemon to start your game, and that critter can level with you the whole game long. You'll give them a unique name, see them evolve and mature. You still pick a starter here, but none of that emotional attachment here. Your starter will be universally ground into the aforementioned kibble and fed to a higher level version of itself caught in the wild.
This signature is false.
The Wii craze that basically lasted 5 years and resulted in record number of sales and some absolute classic games? Yeah, I remember it. And I still play my Wii. I haven't played it but Pokemon GO is going to be many people's first dose of augmented reality and that's going to give it a lot of staying power.