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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.
eventually and people will move on to other things.
Anyone remember the Nintendo Wii craze when it first came out?
Isn't this a good thing?
IMHO (which is biased) Pokemon has a limited lifespan, until people actually get bored doing the same old shit every day. There is almost nothing compelling about the game, and there is very little if any competition between the teams.
So, while it may be exciting now, because it is shiny and new, once the luster tarnishes, what is there to hold the attention of Dory the Fish?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No kidding. They sure this isn't subsidized by the NSA or some other intelligence agency, to trick people into voluntarily having their whereabouts tracked via GPS everywhere they go? Fools.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.
As Sheldon put it, the beauty of having online friends is not having to meet them. Why would I want to meet these people only to remind me that I'm like them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder if it could have been the killer app for google glass... if people hadn't been so freaked out about privacy that they would assault anyone wearing one.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Compared to Cameron this can only be an improvement. Then again, the average water cooler would be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You say people wandering off cliffs 'cause they're too stupid to survive as if that was a bad thing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
this can't be a real APK post, it's short
Believe it or not, most people have emotional responses like "compassion" and "empathy".
Before you respond with some pro-eugenics screed, consider that people who lack the above traits would be among those on the chopping block...
Required reading for internet skeptics
> NSA or some other intelligence agency, to trick people
"Sir, we've found that there's clusters of pokemon players at the dratini spawns. What could this mean?"
"We're aware soldier. Word from the top is that they'll have fully evolved dragonites within a week."
Comparing it to Miitomo is a fucking joke. That was some interactive social experiment crap. This is goddamned pokemon.
If Nintendo wanted to make apps, they would need to use one of their actual franchises. That doesn't mean they have to make Mobile Mario (though they could!), or ANY *existing* franchise (though they should!). But it does mean that they need fantasy characters in a fantasy world, not more stupid Mii bullshit.
> Nobody on /. cares about Pokemon.
Oh get real, this game is huge.
since when is that a bad thing?
i'm all for anything that pulls people away from facebook, even if it means every so often one wanders off a cliff looking for a pokemon.
Arizona reporting in: just lost another one...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/1...
Oh, i pity them, all right. Just not regret them.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
And then slice virtual fruits using virtual knives to feed the angry birds?
What if the angry birds eating sliced fruits become candy that you must crush?
Inquiring minds want to know...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They said the same about the Kinect. It lasted ... what, 3 months?
What interests me is how Microsoft seems to have again missed the boat after being a pioneer in augmented reality with their HoloLens. A replay of earlier failures to press home their market-leader status in pocket and larger touch-screen devices, in gestural interfaces, and in web browsers.
They seem to have a fixation on big lost battles like search and their own phone ecosystem, rather than exploiting and continuing to perfect their innovations. They develop exciting things, but move on while they're still primitive.
.
http://www.infowars.com/pokemo...
Pokémon Go Linked to CIA Augmented reality software could turn smartphones into Imperial probe droids
The ‘augmented reality’ mobile game Pokémon Go, which uses the player’s smartphone camera to ‘add’ Pokémon to real-world locations, has ties to the CIA. The developer of Pokémon Go, Niantic, Inc., was founded by John Hanke, who previously received funding from the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to develop what eventually became Google Earth.
Pay-to-Win is the definition of capitalism.
Anyone who knows the ecosystem knows it translates into "skip timers/grinds" or "pay to win".
I'm not even saying those in a bitter tone, those are pretty much the well-known, widely understood foundations of freemium.
What is that you think they're going to gleam from that data given that they had the ingress data for the past three years?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
There's 21 million daily users...even a tiny percentage of them sometimes spending money adds up quickly.
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
If you are willing to pay not to play the game, then why are you playing the game? Honestly, I never understood that.
...we're gonna Pokie like it's 1999!
This is how I see cheats. But for a serious answer, if it only takes a dollar to permanently recalibrate a game's artificially-inflated grinds (they know exactly what they're fucking doing) back to par, you get tempted.
That's a generous example, usually the game is more bullshit than that and it's best to walk away.
Historically speaking, people without compassion and empathy tend to hide their crap well and tend to be much more guarded against typical human scheming and unpredictability thus increasing their survival ratings,
while people with compassion and empathy tend to be the first idiots to fall because with those two traits comes a giant jump in naivety and self-destructive trustworthiness whereby they get used as tools or sacrificial pawns easily.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but someone had to. If there's one thing the human species is good at, and woe be any alien idiots who try to invade, it's scheming and unpredictability.
From politicians up there making it a hobby of fucking everyone over around them and manipulating whole groups, to business people manipulating the politicians and society with marketing, to average Joes manipulating their job environment to enable easy-going laziness or hierarchical movement within the company, to the all-too-cliche manipulation involving romance and relationships, down to the children manipulating parents to evade chores or the school environment for grades and test avoidance,
it is always the manipulators who go ahead, while you compassionate sympathy machines end up dragging behind or being used like condoms to be tossed away.
Hell and welcome to Humanity, enjoy your stay. Next time your are competing with me on a job offer or advancement, expect me to not be compassionate and filled with all that rainbow sympathy, because i'll defame you, set you up, and do all in my power so you lose you job (and thus my competition). And i'll sleep like a baby after that because your failure means more food on my family's table. There is no share and care bubba.
I am sorry, but I can't feel compassion for people who walk into their own grave because they're too stupid to take a look first. It might surprise you, though, that I am VERY readily willing to offer any help to people who got into a difficult situation without any fault of their own. Not going into private details here, but that can go to lengths others wouldn't even consider.
But no regret, no compassion, no empathy for people too stupid to survive. Ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
But no regret, no compassion, no empathy for people too stupid to survive. Ever.
People like children and those with intellectual disabilities...
Oh, not those people, right? You surely have compassion and empathy for them. Where do you draw the line? What sort of person do you actually have in mind? Who isn't worthy of the same consideration you so generously offer to others?
Required reading for internet skeptics
By a staggering coincidence, there is a PokeStop at my local bar. For $0.80 worth of virtual currency, the bartender can activate a "lure" - the lure draws pokemon to spawn at the bar, and the pokemon and the alcohol (or food - a patio restaurant with the patio within range of a Pokestop is SUPER EFFECTIVE) combined draw humon to ... well, they walk to the bar, and what they do after they're too drunk to catch Pokemon isn't really any of our business. As long as they pay while they're eating and drinking.
To math it out in full: $0.80 for a lure, 30 minutes. So about $10 in costs for the restaurant if it wants to cover lunch/dinner. If it brings in just one more customer to shop there instead of their competitor half a block away - the restauranteur makes money. (The customer has spent $20 for an hour-long meal, during which they grab about 1000 XP worth of gaming per user, plus 12 5-minute-cooldown-regulated hits at the Pokestop, each typically yielding $0.30 worth of Pokeballs, postions, and other virtual goods.)
Win-win situation. Customer who was going to eat a $20 meal gets $1 worth of virtual trinkets from Niantic. Proprietor pays $1.60 to attract as many customers as play the game. But even if it's just one person sitting at a table alone, that's $20 in revenue and even at a 50% markup on the food, about $10 in profit. Net win for Proprietor is at least $8.40.
I've seen a lot of MMO launches. Tell me the numbers in 6 months.
See that "Preview" button?
You can't track something that's powered off. Surprise! I don't have a smartphone, I have a flip phone, it doesn't even have GPS, and if I'm feeling particularly paranoid, I can remove the battery, too. Don't need to really, when it's 'off' it's all the way off, and it can't be turned on remotely. No plans to get a smartphone either. I'll take the cheapest dumbphone I can get when I have to replace it, and like this one it'll be off when I'm not using it. Nothing to track!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
John Nash? is that you?
I don't see much use for this data, because people are being actually guided by the application, rather than acting on their own.
You have to remember that in the end of the day, what google wants with the data is to sell it to the companies as statistics and bullshit like "yes, getting a red logo made more people pay attention to your product".
Of course, a more likely scenario would be to place a pokemon close to a product you want to sell, but its arguable if the person will even see the product.
What if this Pokemon game is a project designed to map, view, and record areas that were previously unmapped/not yet recorded for future use by a yet to be named entity for whatever purpose they please? Think about it.
"Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.." Homer Simpson
It feels like the first truly social game, not play alone with strangers in the basement.
Have you heard of Ingress, Niantic's other social game? www.ingress.com
Yes, I'm somewhat bitter about Pokemon Go and the players overtaking the areas I play for Ingress. The unfortunate, but obvious decision was to use the same location for portals in Ingress, for pokestops and gyms in Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go is less of a social game when compared to Ingress. Pokemon Go is also a game that will be ruined by cheaters and people who pay to play. Ingress has it's fair share of cheaters but you can't buy things to give yourself an incredible advantage. While I don't like that aspect of Pokemon Go and is part of the reason I dislike it, I know it'll only support Ingress and it's development as well. It's a double-edge sword. The game also has helped Ingress gain more players but, because the games are much different in how you play and level up it's unknown if any of them will stick around. Most probably will think it's way too hard in comparison to Pokemon Go despite our efforts to help them. There are many overlaying aspects between the two games that will ruin Ingress for some (same locations and cooldown periods). Most people can handle the initial surge of people in the areas but if this keeps up, Niantic may have just shot themselves in the foot with Ingress and some of it's players.
Neither children nor disabled people chose their condition. Try again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The only things you actually have to buy (as in, can't get for free from a pokestop) is the bag and Pokemon storage upgrade, which alow you to have more items and pokemon at once. They're purely optional. There is literally no need to spend any money to have fun with this game. it sucks that so many other games have completely ruined our outlook on games that offer optional IAP.
Every generation of consoles cause streams of claims the sky has finally fallen in on Nintendo. Sega's (and Turbographics)CD based systems were the initial perceived killer. After that the N64 (still cartridge based) was not powerful enough to compete. Then the Gamecube was again not powerful enough to play the games people wanted to buy. Then the Wii was just the cube put into a new box with fancy shake equipped controllers. At every stage Nintendo causes a rip to form in the 'power is everything' argument. Nintendo clearly isnt working on the same model. Nintendo creates fads and they ride those through the hardware eras. They invest their billions on unique hardware and create opportunities for completely original gameplay. Nintendo brought back gaming in the 80s. They mastered the art of fun immersive long form adventure gaming with Zelda, Metroid and Mario in the 90s. They basically invented party gaming with the Wii in the 2000s. Meanwhile their portable gaming has been on the cutting edge the entire time until phones became portable computers. Despite the loss of control over that portable market they have now found a way to revitalize both the portable gaming industry and Nintedo themselves. In a year there will be a dozen games blatantly copying this new innovation and Nintendo will have the best of them. Part of this is because Sony and Microsoft treat their consoles as an inroad to gaining customers in other branches of technology or services. Nintendo just wants people to play their games.
Keep moving that goal post. You stated, quite clearly:
But no regret, no compassion, no empathy for people too stupid to survive. Ever.
Can you choose to be "too stupid to survive"? That's incoherent. Obviously, being "too stupid to survive" is beyond the control of those "too stupid to survive".
Or do you mean "I have no compassion or empathy for people of otherwise normal intelligence who take unnecessary risks"? Well, that makes it easy for you to feel superior to anyone for any reason. (Let's face it, this is all about you feeling superior to an entire class of people.) I don't know that anyone has ever lived their entire life without taking an unnecessary risk. Most people take unnecessary risks every single day. I suspect you also take a fair number of unnecessary risks.
See, you can't actually sort-out what sort of person you think is unworthy of the same basic considerations you'd offer any person. Callous statements like the one you made are completely empty. The sort of nonsense you'd hear from self-righteous teens looking to bolster their own egos.
You're very likely a much better person than your comment suggests. If you give it a little thought, you'll find that you can't stand by your comment without making a deeply uncomfortable ethical compromise.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I was told there would be no math.
You're very good at selective quoting and quotemining. Picking the part about idiocy and leaving out the part where I talk about this not applying to people who are in a disadvantaged position due to no error on their side.
Be it as it may, since nobody really gives a fuck anymore and nobody but the two of us are reading this anymore, and you have made up your mind about me, this is basically as much time as I'm willing to invest here.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think my point is made. You are incapable of answering the only question I've asked you: how you determine who is and is not a recipient of your compassion and empathy.
The answer, obviously, is that you can not. Not without making a deeply uncomfortable ethical compromise. That is, you can not stand by your claim that you have "no regret, no compassion, no empathy for people too stupid to survive. Ever."
I don't care if you just want to "win" a silly argument on the internet and won't admit it here, as long as you can admit it to yourself. You are very likely a much better person than your crass comment suggests. Your stubborn refusal to make the ethical compromise necessary to stand by that terrible comment suggests that.
Required reading for internet skeptics
irrelevant as fuck.
The game is great in a browser (but cpu heavy and not using multiple cores), but sucks on mobile devices. Just like agar its controls are made for a mouse, not a touch screen.
If you want a game, which actually works better on a touch screen install osmos. Looks like agar, has a similiar objective (in some types of levels) but the controls work with tapping behind instead of moving the mouse point in the direction you want to go. So they are great on tablets or even phones.
There's an app for that.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
...slashing out at virtual fruit and ranting about green pigs. They were playing some game called MD2020
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You don't have to actually meet people to play Pokemon Go. It can help for coordinating efforts on powerful gyms, but it's definitely not necessary.
You're assuming that all revenue goes to gains, whereas only a relatively small portion is actually the operating margin. Then there's the fact that customers may lay down their own lures if the proprietor does nothing.
I imagine there's probably still a net benefit, but it's not quite as clear as you claim here. The largest benefit would probably coming from geeky spots (e.g. gaming bars) having regular events (e.g. Wednesday night Pokemon).
You might be surprised to learn that many video games are quite social.