Pokemon Go will continue to expand under Niantic’s watchful eye, following news of some impressive new stats.
According to data firm Sensor Tower, the hit Android and iOS app has seen significant growth when it comes to its revenue streams.
As many Trainers will already know, Pokemon Go is free to download and play but comes with a shop where PokeCoins can be spent.
These microtransactions help support the game, which appears to be in a healthy position both in player numbers and revenue.
According to Sensor Tower, Pokemon Go generated an estimated $73 million in gross revenue worldwide across the App Store and Google Play in October.
“This was approximately 67 percent more than was spent in the game during October 2017, when the title grossed and estimated $43.6 million globally,” the Sensor Tower report confirms.
“It was also enough to place Pokémon GO at No. 8 for revenue among all apps on both stores worldwide, and No. 7 among mobile games. This ranked it one spot ahead of Fortnite from Epic Games.
“Japan barely edged out the United States in terms of its share of spending in Pokémon GO last month, accounting for 33.2 percent of the total, compared to the 32.9 percent contributed by Niantic’s home territory.
“Fifty-four percent of overall spending came from Google Play users.”
The question is whether the game can keep things going during the cold season, with winter an obvious problem for a game based on playing outside.
As this new growth in revenue is probably based partly on Trainers returning due to new features and Gen 4 Pokemon to catch, we would suggest it will.
The new Friends and Trading features helped kick-start the game again earlier this year and have proven very popular with fans.
And it looks like the new big update is being planned by Niantic right now.
According to those tracking the network traffic, Sinnoh evolution items have been found.
The Sinnoh Stone is used to evolve certain types of Pokemon and could be the next big Gen 4 update.
Here’s the Pokemon Go description for the new item, which states: “A special stone originally found in the Sinnoh region that can make certain species of Pokémon evolve.
“It is very tough and has a beautiful sheen.”
The interesting thing about this item is that the Sinnoh Stone has never been used in earlier Game Freak Pokemon games.
They have appeared in unofficial fanmade titles, which begs the question of whether this new item will be replacing other evolution items in Gen 4.
For the time being this has been data miners and isn’t an official announcement from Niantic.
So at this time, the release of the new item remains speculation at this time, with no firm release date known.