Pokemon Go is on track to become the most downloaded game of all time
Pokemon Go hasn’t been out for twenty days but it has already helped Nintendo to trade an unprecedented amount of shares in Japan.
Pokemon Go is well on its way to becoming the most downloaded and played video game (mobile or desktop) of all time. Not only that, Pokemon Go has enabled Nintendo to record the biggest daily turnover in Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX) this century.
Bloomberg, a news agency, and an online business website, reported that Nintendo (which doesn’t even own Pokemon Go or Niantic Labs, the developers of the augmented reality video game for Android and iOS) traded about $4.5 billion worth of stocks on Friday.
In Japan, that amount equals about 476,000,000,000 yen. Regardless of your reservations on Japan’s exchange rate, that is a lot of money. That number is so huge that it broke the record that was held by another giant, Tokyo Electric, which is an energy company in Japan.
But Tokyo Electric wasn’t the only company that was left in Nintendo’s (Pokemon Go inspired) wake as other victims include the likes of Aiful (a big finance company), Mizuho (a large bank), SoftBank (a telecommunications and internet corporation), and Nippon Steel (a steel producer. World’s 2nd largest in fact) who all came behind Nintendo in terms of pure numbers.
This isn’t even the first time Pokemon Go has made the news just for making Nintendo a ton of money. Last week it was revealed that Pokemon Go helped Nintendo’s share price jump by 70 percent. Later some media outlets further increased that figure to 90 percent.
Pokemon Go also pushed Nintendo’s share price by a massive 10 percent on the first day of launch.
And considering that Pokemon Go hasn’t had a worldwide launch yet (initially, it was launched only in USA, Australia, and New Zealand but not it has been launched in EU as well) that is a pretty magical feat.
As reported earlier, Pokemon Go, an augmented reality game for Android and iOS is not even Nintendo’s property. Nintendo only owns 32 percent stake in Pokemon Go company and had no involvement in the game’s development.
Pokemon Go company is currently owned by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. but the Pokemon trademark is owned by Nintendo which is probably the reason why Nintendo has been at the receiving end of such a massive marketing boost.
Pokemon Go is becoming a huge financial success for Nintendo even though the game is free for download
The development of Pokemon GO was solely carried out by Niantic Labs that is mostly referred to as a Google spin-off company. For clarity’s sake, Nintendo also has a non-majority stake in Niantic Labs, but that doesn’t change the fact that the idea for a Pokemon augmented reality game was sparked by a Google April fool prank (in which it showed Pokemon in the real world through a video) and Niantic Labs previous experience while developing a game known as Ingress.
In other words, Google had more to do with Pokemon Go’s development than Nintendo, yet Google is getting none of the media while Nintendo is raking in all the profits.
If you think these statistics are crazy, then you would be glad to know that these figures are projected to go up as soon as Niantic Labs come up with more features and ideas for Pokemon Go in the coming updates.
What would happen when Pokemon Go launches, officially, in all countries?
Well, as far as financial considerations are concerned, Pokemon Go has not only made money for Nintendo but also has made money for a lot of other people who had bought shares in the company.
One person invested around $3000 in the company and the success of Pokemon Go increased his share price by a hundred percent.
That isn’t much of a good news for readers now as it probably is too late for people who are trying to jump on the bandwagon. And let’s not forget the fact that financial markets are inherently unstable and that’s why most experts agree to never invest all your savings in one company for the fear that one crash could destroy all your life’s earnings.
Moving on from the financial markets to video games. It has been reported that Nintendo is still trying to make more money off Pokemon Go.
Niantic Labs have already announced that they will be bringing in more micro-transaction features in the game (for example Pokemon trading and more customization options for real money) and will strike sponsorship deals for PokeStop and PokeGyms in the augmented reality video game.
An agreement with McDonalds is already on the cards for Nintendo and Niantic Labs has made around $14 million from the game’s PokeCoins transactions.
Even with all that, the essential fact is that Pokemon Go is still a free download on Android and iOS. Meaning, that Nintendo cannot make money off Pokemon Go even if all six billion humans on this planet download the augmented reality video game.
The company has to seek other routes to make money off a wildly popular video game, that is Pokemon Go. One way, media sources have revealed, that Nintendo could use Pokemon Go’s popularity to further boost its profits is to lure people who have downloaded the game to buy Wii U or its next generation console game Nintendo NX.
Nintendo is planning on releasing a sequel to Pokemon video game for its Wii U and possibly NX which could have features that are unavailable in Pokemon Go at the moment.
Wii U is known in gaming communities all over the world for its unique and high-quality exclusive titles that have given Wii U the edge over the likes of Xbox One and PS4 console, both of which are vastly more powerful gaming machines than Wii U in terms of pure processing power.
The success of Pokemon Go could also boost sales of other handheld Pokemon games such as Pokemon Sun/Moon which was slated to have a decent amount of sales regardless but with Pokemon Go’s success, they could try skyrocket now.
As a side effect, Nintendo could also look forward to increased sales for its 3DS system on which Pokemon Sun/Moon is expected to get a launch date.
The way Pokemon Go is taking over the minds of people of all nations, it seems like a copy of Pokemon Go on your mobile phone might become legally mandatory for everyone to be part of a regular society.
Make no mistake, Pokemon Go is currently unstoppable and will be for the foreseeable future as the game itself is barebones. There are so many features that Niantic Labs is holding back because of server issues.
Once those are addressed, we can expect a further boom in its popularity.
Pokemon Go has been the agent of change and has pushed Nintendo’s worth more than Sony’s after a considerably long time.
That news might be hard to hear for a lot of people who own a Sony PlayStation console but there is no hiding the fact that now Nintendo is worth $40 billion while Sony is worth only $38.8 million dollars.
Pokemon is expected to not only shake the augmented reality gaming market but also the financial market for, it seems, quite some time.
Still new to Pokemon Go? Check out our detailed guide here. And to further immerse yourself in the Pokemon Go universe, you better read about the known issues with Pokemon Go.
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