Sometime over the weekend, Niantic's Pokémon Go went from being a fun time waster for nostalgic Nintendo fans to a bona fide viral hit that's drawing mainstream media coverage and questions from well-meaning but confused parents. The humble geolocation game has shot to No. 1 on the iTunes App Store download and earnings lists and is already threatening to surpass Twitter in daily users on Android devices. Nintendo stock is up about 25 percent today on news of the game's success, and Spotify says all five of its most-streamed songs over the past week have been Pokémon-related.

This is officially a phenomenon.

In the wake of the game's stratospheric success, you could already sense a few embryonic media storylines brewing over the weekend. Here are some of the major angles we can already see developing around Pokémon Go and some instant, skeptical analysis you can break out when you want to show off your industry smarts at your next dinner party.

This validates Nintendo's mobile strategy

Pokémon Go's success definitely validates a mobile game development strategy—just not necessarily Nintendo's mobile game development strategy. That's because, as was announced last September , Pokémon Go is actually a collaboration between Nintendo and three other companies: Game Freak (the developers of many previous Pokémon games), The Pokémon Company (itself a conglomeration of Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures), and Google-affiliated (but now separate ) Niantic Inc.

Of these four, Niantic seems to have had the most to do with Pokémon Go's actual design and format. The game itself is extremely similar to Ingress, Niantic's previous game, which similarly aimed to force people to get out of the house and capture points based on their real-world, GPS-tracked location. The Pokémon Company's Tsunekazu Ishihara noted the Ingress inspiration explicitly in announcing the game, saying he "felt that it shared a common philosophy with Pokémon and that with the developer, Niantic, we could create a new type of Pokémon game."

Nintendo deserves credit for investing significant money into Niantic months ago and for allowing its brand to be used by an outside developer. But the game isn't proof that Nintendo itself suddenly knows how to develop a hit mobile game. When legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto spoke at the September announcement, his comments mainly had to do with the history of the franchise and the Pokémon Go Plus wrist-band accessory, rather than exciting game design ideas. The Nintendo logo doesn't even appear on the game's official Web page; all the company gets there is a tiny notice as the Pokémon trademark holder.

Nintendo didn't even seem that interested in Pokémon Go from a business standpoint. When the company has talked about its mobile plans in recent months (as it has multiple times ), Pokémon Go barely even earned a mention. Instead, the company's public mobile gaming comments have been focused on the recently launched Miitomo and upcoming games made in partnership with Japanese mobile powerhouse DeNA (including titles that use the Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing licenses).

This all suggests Nintendo saw Pokémon Go as a mere licensing play and largely lucked into being involved with the first mobile megahit to be associated with one of its brands. Hopefully, the company will draw the right lessons from that fortunate break.

This proves that people are hungry for augmented reality

Maybe. But it's just as likely that it proves people are hungry for Pokémon on their phones and are willing to try augmented reality to get it.

When people talk about Pokémon Go as "augmented reality," they're mainly referring to two things: the game's reliance on real-world location data to find fictional characters and the ability to see Pokémon in the "real world" through a cell phone camera and display. These features are far from unique to Pokémon Go, though, and plenty of other recent games and apps have failed to find the same kind of success with either of them.

Look at Niantic's own location-based, which as of January had reached 14 million downloads in about three years of availability. That's not bad for a free-to-play title from a new company with an unknown name. But it pales in comparison to Pokmon Go, which is reportedly already making $1.6 million a day in its first weekend . Why is one so much more successful than the other? The household-name branding of the Pokémon franchise seems the most likely culprit.

As for camera-based AR, there are dozens of apps built around projecting information over the real-world imagery from your camera. Look through that linked list, though, and you'll probably realize you've never heard of most of those apps or companies.

That's because holding up your phone to see a small window into an AR "landscape" is inherently awkward and useful only in very limited (and short) situations. As it turns out, sending humorous pictures of Pokémon projected over real-world settings is one of those situations (though the novelty of this could easily wear off with a bit more time).

When games like the PlayStation Vita's Invizimals tried to similarly project augmented reality critters on the real world a few years back, the market reacted with critical shrugs and a general lack of player interest. The likely difference, again, is that lucrative Pokémon branding.

It's a fad, people will get tired of it

Perhaps Pokémon Go proves the public is finally ready to embrace these phone-based AR gimmicks. Remember, though, that when a counterfeit version of Pokémon Yellow shot to near the top of the iOS App Store charts a few years ago, it didn't need any fancy AR features to find success. When trying to separate the appeal of Pokémon from the appeal of phone-based augmented reality, I'd lean toward Pokémon being the much larger driving force in's success.

The biggest complaint about Pokémon Go from many gamers is that it doesn't offer enough depth. After players have found some nearby Pokémon, leveled them up a bit, and maybe done some battles at their local gym, they'll realize there's not much inherently interesting in just watching their collection grow and their numbers slowly go up. Or so the argument goes.

This seems like a short-sighted objection to me. The inherently addictive nature of the "catch 'em all" mechanic has been proven by decades of Pokémon games now and will likely survive even without the Game Boy series' somewhat thin RPG gameplay underneath. And everything from Clash Royale to Cookie Clicker to the Diablo series has proven the lizard brain appeal of games that are, at their root, focused on watching numbers go up. When it comes to getting people hooked, Pokémon Go's lack of depth might be a feature instead of a bug.

What's more, Pokémon Go can grow and evolve with its player base. The version of the game being enjoyed today is the "minimum viable product" sent out to prove the concept has legs. Now that this has been proven (to the tune of millions of players) the game can be expanded through frequent updates that can add new items, new gameplay features, and new Pokémon to find. Simply adding a Pokémon-trading feature and the ability to battle nearby players at any time would extend the game's life substantially.

Some early players will no doubt drop off in the next few weeks as they grow tired of Pokémon Go's gimmicks. But after making such a huge initial splash, even a large drop will leave a huge core of dedicated players eagerly trying to catch them all well into the future. Like it or not, Pokémon Go probably isn't going anywhere.