“Is Pokemon GO dying?” is probably one of the most frequent questions we hear coming from people who are not playing or who used to play.
In short, no, the game is not dying, it is doing very well in fact. The player base numbers have finally stabilized enough to be relevant and trustworthy.
We’ll be reviewing a few metrics to prove that the game is not dying:
- Player retention (number of players continuously playing the game)
- Google searches related to Pokemon GO
Pokemon GO Player Retention
According to data collected by SurveyMonkey, the retention rate of Pokemon GO players is inline with other top mobile games.
If you’re unsure, this is what retention means:
retention: the continued possession, use, or control of something.
According to the data collected, the player base retention rate is currently around 75%. In other words, 75% of players are continuing to play the game week by week.
What happens with the remaining 25%? Those players are the ones who did not log in to the game for two (or more) weeks. Usually, we call this percentage the weekly “churn rate”.
www.surveymonkey.comWhen compared with other top grossing apps like Clash of Clans, Subway Surfers, etc. Pokemon GO is not different in any way.
The game is losing and gaining users as expected, but with one jarring difference: scale.
Pokemon GO is a monster in terms of numbers and a weekly 25% churn results in 3.9M player loss!
This is what SurveyMonkey says about the game’s retention rate:
Let’s compare Pokémon GO to Clash of Clans–since they have very similar weekly user retention rates–to illustrate a point:
According to our data, Clash of Clans currently has ~3.85 million weekly active users (WAU).
- With a weekly retention rate of 75% (a weekly churn rate of 25%), Clash loses ~960 thousand players from week to week.
Pokémon GO has 15.4 million weekly active users.
- With a weekly retention rate of 75%, it loses ~3.9 million users from week to week.
Google searches for related terms
Google searches also indicate that the game growth has stabilized and it’s not dying anytime soon.
According to Google Trends, the search volume for “pokemon go” has reduced significantly and is now entering the “long tail” phase.
“Long tail” is a common search phenomena and denotes a stable and stagnant period of any search term.
Sounds concerning? Not necessarily, as the tail for Pokemon GO is huge, even though it may not look like that!
Comparing the current game search volume with another common query, reveals it’s true side:
Pokemon GO is less popular than Twitter and PornHub, but much more popular than DotA or Clash of Clans.
As you can see, Pokemon GO is far from dying.