Pokemon Go’s not just a social phenomenon that has people out on the streets in droves. It’s actually ridiculously profitable for Nintendo. While Nintendo’s earlier dip into mobile waters–Miitomo didn’t turn out very well, Pokemon Go took the world by storm, literally overloading servers. Unsurprisingly, it’s all incredibly profitable for Nintendo, too.
According to the data analysts over at Super Data Research, Pokemon Go has already earned 14.04 million dollars. In the past one week. In contrast, Ingress, an earlier augmented reality game by developer Niantic (which, is actually quite similar to and forms the basis of Pokemon Go) has been on the market for four years, has generated only 1.1 million dollars.
Pokemon Go is an interesting case because, it takes an almost universally recognised brand (Pokemon) and turns it into an AR game (a notoriously niche genre.) Outing an AR title was a risky move, but Pokemon, which is, after all, about catching weird little monsters in a pocket-friendly way, lends itself almost too well to an AR game.
Where do you think Pokemon Go will go from here?