Pokemon GO’s 2023 revenue could be a bad sign for Niantic
It's immensely difficult to deny the monstrous impact of Pokemon GO. Though the app led to some pretty serious injuries along the way, Pokemon GO mania was incredibly real, and at the height of the game's popularity, it was the talk of the town. We don't just mean in gaming communities.
Even beyond The Pokemon Company's already high standards, the 2016 AR game crushed it and became a cultural moment. But times have changed, and seven years later, things aren't looking so good for Niantic.
Player spending is trending downwards for Pokemon GO
Click to enlargeUh oh. New data posted by CasinosEnLigne has indicated that the speed at which Pokemon GO's profits are falling is increasing year by year. It worryingly indicates that a monstrous drop-off could be in the game's future.
While 2020 offered the very best of Niantic's profits (presumably due to the pandemic), 2021 saw a pretty big fall from $909.1 million in in-game purchases to $877.6 million. It's a big number, but still a huge deterioration, and it gets worse yet.
2022's profits from in-app purchases crashed again to $703.7 million, and now, as 2023 stands with only $318.5 million at the eight-month mark, it looks like its biggest collapse is yet to come.
Pokemon GO downloads are down too
Click to enlargeIt isn't just in-app purchases that are tanking, it appears to be the downloads themselves. The same source reports that last year's downloads were down from 52.5 million downloads to 43 million. 2023's year's six-month mark has only documented 21.1 million downloads.
We could have seen this coming eventually, but it looks like a serious downtick is about to hit Pokemon GO. All of this comes as Niantic battles mass layoffs and community blackout days. Unfortunately for Pokemon GO, it sounds like complaints about Raid Passes aren't all it has to worry about. Can Niantic turn it around?
