I've heard that the developers are continuously adding things, but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it.[1]
Of course there was a spike at first release, like every other game. Less press after a year is hardly indicative of the game being only hype. If you can name a game that didn't get less press a year after release I'd love to hear it.
> but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it
I'd love to hear why you think this is true other than someone mentioning it with no explanation in the top comment of that link. The only thing I can think of is a slight hit to pokeball drop rates which - while annoying - only affects those in rural areas who don't have access to many pokestops. This game (like Ingress) has always been geared toward urban areas and ignored rural players. This was an issue day 1 and it hasn't changed unfortunately, but this is not a recent development.
Honestly, the game is pretty hollow and is hardly something I'd recommend everyone pick up, but to say that it was only hype and things aren't looking good now is uninformed.
Major nitpick, i know, but you said game not app so i guess Minecraft[1] got pretty much a stable news coverage throughout the years
I didn't say the game flopped. It didn't, but the excitement the parent comment to mine talked about was just because of hype, and it is not holding up. That's was my observation.
If you look at the current numbers, I bet they aren't having problems with anticipating server capacity now.
Pokemon was a big parts of multiple generations, so the initial outburst of players; because of nostalgia. The retention rate is very low I would imagine.
Yes, it is no where near what it was at launch, but that is because the launch stats were astronomical.
I agree it is a huge success, but it could have been much more.
The people who played and quit with the hype weren't the people paying money in the first place. The people who were throwing money at the game are still playing and still paying money. And they now have corporate sponsorships rolling now as well. For example, I just saw an event this past weekend that clearly paid to have lures up at all stops in the area.
I don't think that things "aren't looking so well" yet. It doesn't have the peak playerbase anymore, but its certainly still making good money.
The adult contingent has dropped off a lot but I bet once they add PvP it'll pick up.
It's still a cute game, but there is little depth atm.
At this point I honestly lost hope that they'll ever add it.
But if they are still gaining new users, perhaps that doesn't matter. Be interesting to know what that gain/loss math looks like.
After all, for such games, if you're not going to spend money, then you're not a customer - the only reason for allowing you to play is to use you to advertise the game to potential customers; making it harder to play freely might be the only way to turn you from an user to a customer.