According to a report, Pokémon GO reported plummeting revenue in April. Now developer Niantic reacted to the numbers.
These were the numbers: A report from the mobilegamer.biz portal pointed out that in April 2023, Pokémon GO suffered a drop in revenue – so high that the game reportedly had its weakest month since February 2018.
Now a spokesman for developer Niantic has spoken to the Eurogamer portal on the subject. “We do not generally comment on third-party estimates of our earnings as they are often incorrect, which is the case here,” the statement said.
Niantic speaks of higher sales than 2022
Niantic says: In fact, sales so far in 2023 for the same period are even higher than last year, according to Niantic. However, the statement that April was a weaker month is not explicitly denied.
However, Niantic told Eurogamer that it would not focus on monthly trends “as these fluctuate due to large live events”.
The original report caused quite a stir as it came on the heels of a difficult month for Pokémon GO where changes to long-distance raids caused a lot of anger in the community. Some players then announced that they no longer wanted to invest any more money or even put the game aside altogether.
Niantic also briefly refers to the changes: “The changes this year have already resulted in an increase in in-person raids and we look forward to introducing exciting new features in the coming months,” said the statement.
How is the community reacting? Niantic’s statement is already being discussed in the Pokémon GO subreddits. Some people are surprised that Niantic reacted so quickly here, because when players openly opposed the changes to the long-distance raid passes, there was no response from Niantic.
This has left some players dissatisfied, who were hoping for more answers from the developer to their concerns, but didn’t get any while there was a quick response here (via reddit).
Other players simply express their frustration with the changes and the lack of feedback in the comments. Many users still want the changes to be rolled back or adjusted, but as of now there are no signs that anything of the sort is imminent.
The discussion surrounding the remote raid changes has been going on for over a month now. You can find out the background to the anger about the long-distance raid passes in Pokémon GO here.