When Pokémon GO launched in the summer of 2016, it became a global phenomenon upon release. Everywhere people roamed around to collect the virtual pocket monsters in their neighborhood. A success that developer Niantic has not been able to copy to this day. Now Peridot is to dare the next attempt.
How time flies: Pokémon GO will be seven years old this summer, it’s practically in the second grade. It’s been a long time since the big hype that arose when the game was born. Scenes like back then, when players ran almost en masse to grab a wild Pokémon, are now rather rare.
But even today there is a large, active community. She is still regularly on the go with Pokémon GO on her cell phone to catch monsters, do raids or hatch eggs.
It continues to make money successfully. Statista reported the following sales figures for the past few years (via Statista):
The game has had its ups and downs. The last few weeks in particular have caused a lot of criticism after long-distance raid bonuses were removed and created frustration in the community, which even led to open letters, calls for boycotts and petitions towards Niantic. Who knows – if there was a really good alternative to Pokémon GO, players might even switch.
But to date, no augmented reality game has been able to occupy this niche, which Pokémon GO has carved out on its own, as well as the previous top dog. In this respect, Pokémon GO remains a phenomenon as things stand. One that Niantic wanted to replicate several times – but has not managed to do so to this day. Let’s take a look back.
The search for the AR alternative to Pokémon GO has so far been unsuccessful
In recent years there have been many games that, like Pokémon GO, have tried to lure players outside and connect gaming with the real world. The latest attempt is called “Peridot” – a game that can probably best be described as “AR Tamagotchi”.
The concept is definitely suitable for an AR game. A virtual pet is projected into the real world via camera, which, by the way, works better at first glance than the AR function in Pokémon GO. You should now cherish and care for the little animal, take it with you on adventures and breed more dots.
The game itself is going well, but the release date on May 9th has so far gone without much fanfare. There is a lack of attention, at least for now. An indicator: the Peridot subreddit has just 886 members as of now, while Pokémon GO has 4.3 million members. This can of course continue to grow and the development of the game remains to be seen – but at the moment there is nothing to indicate that peridot will also become a global phenomenon.
Logically, “Peridot”, as a previously unknown private label from Niantic, had a more difficult start than Pokémon GO, which was able to draw on the huge appeal of the brand.
But the big brand alone doesn’t do it either. This was shown by other attempts in terms of AR games.
Peridot is also currently at 100,000+ downloads in the Play Store, but has only just reached its release date. Pokémon GO is currently at 100 million + downloads in the Play Store. As a guideline, this provides a good basis for comparison – even if official exact figures or the figures from the iOS store are not known.
Another indicator, here’s the current interest on Google Trends for Pokémon GO (blue line) over the past 12 months, compared to Peridot, Niantic debut Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and NBA All-World. It can be seen that the search interest of the other games in this period does not reach Pokémon GO, despite its age:
It seems that none of the experiments really want to generate the same interest as Pokémon GO.
Meanwhile, another game about monsters is already in the starting blocks: Monster Hunter Now is another attempt to turn a popular game series into an AR experience. Whether that will work remains to be seen.
Niantic is not alone with the problem: The Witcher: Monster Slayer, behind which developer Spokko and CD Projekt Red stand, is preparing to become a mature competitor to Pokémon GO. It didn’t work: the game will be shut down in 2023.
Why doesn’t anything come close to Pokemon GO?
What makes Pokemon GO so successful? One could easily argue here with “it’s just Pokémon”, after all Pokémon is currently one of the biggest brands in the world (via titlemax.com). And that’s certainly a deciding factor, because if you look around the Pokemon community, you’ll see the argument I’m only playing this game because it’s Pokemon, not because of the AR component.
Finally, there is also criticism of the design and gameplay decisions around Pokémon GO. So you read again and again the view that the game itself should actually be much better.
But if you look at it a little more closely, there are a few guesses as to why Pokémon of all things fits this type of game so well. For one thing, it’s a game that works for numerous age groups. Children can do a lot with Pokémon, but the target group with a certain nostalgia for the franchise is also picked up here. Parents can play with their kids, friends can go out together – it’s a game for everyone.
In addition, the mechanics that make up Pokémon are not incredibly complicated and can be ideally transferred to a game like “GO”. After all, in the main games you primarily walk around and collect Pokémon that suddenly appear. This is also the main content of GO: discovering and collecting while exploring the world. With Harry Potter, for example, this connection was not direct.
Team Rocket has also made it to Pokémon GO:
Pokémon GO: Find Rocket Bosses – Here’s how to collect the Rocket Radar and track them down
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The arenas from the main games have also found their place in the game in a modified form. The simple, appropriate things were adopted. It is striking here, for example, that the breeding aspect, which is a bit more complicated, has not found a place in GO – and is now appearing in Peridot.
Overall, Pokémon GO is just pretty close to what you’d expect from the main brand in terms of pure gameplay. This is less the case with other candidates who wanted to enter the same niche.
Last but not least, longevity itself is also a major argument in favor of the game continuing to thrive. Many players who have been around for years would be reluctant to invest time and sometimes money and then just jump off. This is perhaps comparable to WoW in the world of MMOs, where people keep talking about the “WoW killer”, but it just doesn’t come up.
What reasons do you see for the success of Pokémon GO? And why can’t any other game do it? Have you tried alternatives? Tell us in the comments.