'Pokémon Go' Continues to Soak Up Many Hours of Players' Time

Android gamers spend more time playing 'Pokémon Go' than almost anything else

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Updated: Clarified App Annie description.

Although Pokémon Go isn’t quite the behemoth it was when it first launched, it still commands a massive amount of mobile gamers’ time in the U.S.. With regular updates and big gameplay overhauls, Niantic added enough to keep gamers coming back.

When released in mid-2016, Pokémon Go became a cultural phenomenon, seeing millions of people all over the world engaging in catching them all in the real world. Even though interest has since died down a little, Niantic still passed the billion-dollar mark in February thanks to in-game microtransactions and for those still paying and playing, they spend a lot of time doing so.

In the first quarter of 2017, Pokémon Go pulled $40 million in combined revenue from Android and iOS gamers in the U.S. alone, with a relatively constant revenue stream each month according to data and insights company, App Annie. That secured it the sixth spot in combined revenue from both mainstream mobile platforms.

However, it is the time people spend playing the game that is the most impressive. Thanks to its requirement for walking and the distances it requires to complete certain tasks, Pokémon Go enjoys some of the highest levels of user play time of all mobile games. Out of all the play time of the top 20 games on Android in the U.S., Pokémon Go accounts for as much as 20 percent of it.

While this is representative of a downtrend from the third quarter of 2016, where that number was a staggering 45 percent, it shows that Pokémon Go is still engaging its fans. Indeed, if you distil the statistics down to the top five games on Android devices, U.S. mobile gamers spent a third of their time catching pocket monsters and beating down their local gym in Pokémon Go.

Although we will have to wait and see if such numbers and earnings can be maintained, the Pokémon Company, which Niantic licensed the franchise from, will no doubt continue to support it. It made a record profit in the last fiscal year thanks to Pokémon Go, a staggering 26 times the net profit of the prior year.

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