Although most people don't pay anything towards their time playing free to play games, when you have millions of people using your app, that doesn't tend to matter much. In-fact Pokémon Go has drawn in so many people, that less than a month after launching, it's earned its creators at Niantic more than $160 million.
Although this statistics hasn't been confirmed by Niantic itself, Sensor Tower research suggests that its revenue has grown steadily over the past few weeks, culminating in the monstrous figure we have today. It has seen regular jumps in revenue too, as new territories came online, with the largest jump on July 22.
Perhaps as impressive, is that following questionable moves by Niantic, negative reviews don't seem to have had much of an effect on revenue. That would suggest that the people most angered by developer antics are unlikely to be too concerned by gameplay elements - since they are the least effected, being paying customers who generally experience less hiccups than non-payers.
The average amount of time spent in the game hasn't changed either. Mostly people spend around 25 minutes per day, which is more than most people spend on Facebook - another monstrous achievement.
What's going to be interesting in the coming months, is if this usage dies off quite rapidly as the player base reaches higher levels and progression slows.
Do you think you'll keep playing in the future? I quite like the encouragement for more walking. I'll be super cut in no time.
