Were you part of the craze? Probably, most of the world, this writer included, got swept up in the pokénomenon that was Pokémon GO. Niantic’s humble catch ’em all simulator took the world by storm when it came out early last month. It seemed like everyone, young and old, was getting together to trespass in pursuit of an elusive pocket monster. But when was the last time that you opened the app?
It appears that just as quickly as the app took off, it dropped off the radar much like the constant server crashes. According to Bloomberg, interest in the app has taken a massive dip since its launch. As the chart below will show, the app’s daily active users dropped by more that fifteen million since it went live.
At its peak, around July 18th, the app had over forty-four million active users, but ever since then it has been on a steady decline. User engagement is also down according to another chart.
On thing that hasn’t taken a hit is the public’s interest in augmented reality, which has been on the rise thanks to the game. Even with the lack of interest in Pokémon GO people are still researching AR more than before.
It’s unclear what caused the dip in users, but the game has had some trouble during its short life. Bugs, poor community management, and aforementioned server crashes have plagued the game. So it could be that mixed with people generally getting bored with the game that caused it. The candle that burns twice as bright and all that.
Still, even with a loss of fifteen million users, this doesn’t mean that the game is done for, there are still tens of millions of users diligently catching Pokémon. However, this might be a sign that the Pokémon GO craze is at an end.