Pokémon GO has been the breakout hit of 2016. According to our Global Appstore Intelligence, the game has accrued more than 550 million installs and $470 million in revenues in its first 80 days since launch, catapulting both itself and creator Niantic Labs into the mobile gaming big leagues.

To answer some common questions surrounding the game and its players, we examined data from our Game Franchise Consumer Insights. Our clients have just received access to this research, which covers the players of 100 franchises across the US, UK, Germany, and France.

Looking at the demographics, spending habits, and preferences of the Pokémon GO user base reveals that its success is largely constructed on its appeal to its fans from the 1990s. Answering the below questions, we can see how the game has become a new hit by relying on an audience of surprisingly traditional gamers.

Is Pokémon GO a Hype?

It is and is not. If sudden mass appeal characterizes a hype, Pokémon GO fits this definition more than anything else. When almost one in four smartphone or tablet users in the world downloads and plays a game, it’s definitely a mass phenomenon, one that’s disrupted public life at many locations across the globe.

If a hype means that the popularity is short-lived, Pokémon GO is not a hype. Revenue levels have dropped from a peak of $16 million per day in the beginning to a steady $2 million (excluding the 30% fee for app stores) over the past weeks. There are still approximately 700,000 new downloads every single day. Moreover, Pokémon GO is yet to officially launch in South Korea and China. Last week, a Pokémon-GO-type game, City Monsters Go, was launched by publisher Lequsy in China and received rave reviews.

Newzoo CEO Peter Warman comments: “Pokémon GO has opened our eyes in many ways. It has refreshed the top grossing mobile game ranking that has been dominated by a small number of publishers and games for a long time. It has proven beyond a doubt that AR can be applied in ways that appeal to a mass audience. Equally important from a business perspective, it has given Niantic investor Google enormous insight and data that it can incorporate into its location-based advertising and services strategy. The fact that Pokémon GO has motivated kids and youngsters to spend more time outside is an additional bonus, even if that means they take their screens with them.”

The franchise research insights featured in the next paragraphs and images focus on four key countries: the US, UK, Germany, and France. These four countries combined represented 39% of all Pokémon GO downloads through Google Play and 62% of all downloads on iOS devices.

Is Pokémon GO Bringing in New (Mobile) Gamers?

The answer is a resounding yes.

According to our data, 24% of Pokémon GO players hadn’t, in the past three months, played any of the other top mobile franchises we researched. This suggests that the title has attracted more than 20 million new mobile gamers across the US, UK, Germany, and France alone. Some of these were already gaming on other platforms, but 8%, or around 6.6. million, had not played any of the 100 researched franchises in the past three months.

This appeal to a new gaming audience has made Pokémon GO the most popular franchise across every country we studied. In fact, 37% of gamers across these four countries have played Pokémon GO in the past three months. This puts the game well ahead of Candy Crush Saga at #2 which was played by 27% of gamers.

Niantic’s game has been the major beneficiary of these new mobile gamers, as it currently tops the charts in all countries. If even a fraction of Pokémon GO players were to flow into the rest of the ecosystem, such an influx could prove helpful to the mobile gaming industry as a whole.

Is Pokémon GO Reaching Players Who Played Pokémon as Kids?

One of the major reasons behind Pokémon GO’s breakout success has been its ability to leverage the power of the Pokémon brand and reach the players who grew up with the franchise.

This is evident in the demographic profile of the Pokémon GO player. More than one third (36%) are aged between 16-25, versus 21% for the average franchise. This means that players at the higher end of the age range will have played Pokémon Red, Blue, or Green between 1996 and 1999. The younger range will have been children when Ruby, Sapphire, and the rereleased original games (Fire Red and Leaf Green) were brought out between 2003 and 2004. This is indeed the case, as 72% of Pokémon GO players have played at least one of the original Pokémon franchises in their lifetime, versus 42% for the average gamer.

Females make up 43% of Pokémon GO gamers, which is significantly higher than the 33% average across all 100 franchises. This is also a testament to the original franchise, which crossed the gender divide with the help of television shows, merchandise, and other exercises. Men are much more likely to be spending on the game, however, and make up 67% of Pokémon GO payers, versus 53% of the non-payers.

Finally, the positive reception from Pokémon fans has helped boost the game’s overall performance. Players of the original Pokémon franchise give Pokémon GO an average evaluation score of 8.4, which is higher than the 7.9 awarded to the game by fans overall. These gamers are also spending more time on the game and are more likely to have spent money in it.

Pokémon GO’s success is closely linked to the fan base that made the franchise a global success story. This suggests that companies with similarly strong gaming series or brands from the 1990s should consider how to leverage that on mobile.

What Do Pokémon GO Players Most Enjoy About the Game?

The most interesting fact about the Pokémon Go player base is that it appears to be a broadly traditional gaming audience, despite its newness. We looked at which gamers are most likely to be playing the Niantic hit and the results were quite surprising. After players of the regular Pokémon franchise, Dota 2 and Smite gamers are most likely to be playing Pokémon GO. In fact, 80% of these gamers have played Pokémon GO in the past three months.

It also emerged that only 46% of Candy Crush Saga gamers were playing the title. The crossover was much higher among Supercell players, with 77% of Clash Royale players also playing Pokémon GO.

Pokémon GO’s popularity is based on a fusion of interests between the general mobile audience and the preferences of its hard core fan base. While the most popular aspect of Pokémon GO was how easy it was to pick up and play (31% of players liked this), the other most enjoyed features were the ability to roam and explore (25%) and its competitiveness (20%).

This puts Pokémon GO at odds with casual mobile games and places it closer to traditional hard core games. For example, Candy Crush’s most popular feature was also how easy it was to start (49% of players liked this) but competitiveness was ranked as less important than in Pokémon GO (18%).

However, players of MOBAs like DOTA 2 rank competitiveness highly (25%) and prefer openness and role-playing elements.

Conclusion

Pokémon GO succeeded because it enticed an established fan base of traditional gamers into a game that suits its needs, but also the realities of mobile gaming.

Yes, Pokémon GO has successfully brought its 90s kids into the mobile gaming ecosystem, but if Niantic hadn’t created a game that suited the tastes of a relatively conservative gaming audience, it would have struggled to translate its titanic number of installs into monetization success.

Gaming companies wishing to replicate even a fraction of this success with established franchises must therefore seek to strike this balance too. Finding the midpoint between the new realities of mobile gaming, the touch points of an established brand, and the tastes of a mature audience of gamers might be hard to do. But as Niantic has shown, it could prove to be incredibly lucrative if done properly.

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