Report: Pokemon Go may have given the mobile market a shot in the arm

One of the common struggles with most gaming markets is when multiple game developers find themselves competing for what is essentially the same fixed batch of players. If everyone’s playing the largest competitive strategy game on the market, why should they pay attention to an alternate strategy game that has similar gameplay and aesthetics?

The hope for some developers is that they can attract a new batch of players who may not be in their current target audience, but that’s very difficult to pull off. Thanks to Pokemon Go though, mobile developers may have a shot at a chunk of first-time mobile players in search of new games. 

According to a blog post from Newzoo, which has been doing some data analysis of Niantic’s hit mobile game, 24 percent of Pokemon Go players had not, in the last three months, played any of the 30 other major mobile franchises Newzoo tracked. And eight percent of those players (6.6 million total) hadn’t played any of the 100 major game franchises (that extended across mobile, console, and PC) Newzoo targeted in the last three months. 

That means that the mobile games market as a whole may have a shot at a whole new audience thanks to the allure of Pokemon Go. If developers can figure out how to figure out who those players are and what can draw them away from the world of Pokemon, it may effectively expand the mobile games market. 

Newzoo’s trove of data comes with some other interesting nuggets as well. For instance, Newzoo says that 80 percent of DotA players it surveyed also played Pokemon Go, while only 46 percent of Candy Crush players could say the same. (A brief note on that statistic, there’s less overlap between DotA and Pokemon Go than there is with Candy Crush, considering you need to use the same device to play Candy Crush and Pokemon Go)

Newzoo also claims that the game’s audience is nearly gender-equal. Its data indicates that women make up 43 percent of the playing audience (though only 33 percent of paying players.) 

If you want more data on the success of Pokemon Go, be sure to read Newzoo’s full blog containing their findings.