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Apple To Make $3 Billion From Pokemon Go (theguardian.com) 79

Posted by BeauHD from the keep-it-coming dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Guardian: We all know what Pokemon Go is, and we all know how successful it is. The Guardian is reporting that Apple will "rake in $3 billion in revenue from Pokemon Go in the next one to two years as gamers buy 'PokeCoins' from its app store, according to analysts." One pack of 100 PokeCoins costs about $1 in Apple's app store, but gamers can purchase as many as 14,500 PokeCoins for about $100. "We believe Apple keeps 30% of Pokemon Go's revenue spent on iOS devices, suggesting upside to earnings," Needham and Co brokerage analyst Laura Martin wrote in a client note on Wednesday. The game, which is also available on Android, had over 21 million active users after only being on the market for less than two weeks. It has also been rolled out in 35 countries since its U.S. debut. "Martin said Pokemon Go's ratio of paid users to total users was 10 times that of Candy Crush, the hit game from King Digital that generated more than $1 billion of revenue in both 2013 and 2014," reports The Guardian. Not only has Apple's stock risen since the launch of Pokemon Go, but Nintendo's stock has more than doubled.
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Apple To Make $3 Billion From Pokemon Go More

Apple To Make $3 Billion From Pokemon Go

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  • Thats a lot of money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21, 2016 @05:12PM (#52557369)

    I wonder what they got paid for helping to catch the kickass torrents guy.

  • Silly me, I play for free and just listen to free podcasts for music too.

    Wow.

    Gotta catch all the rubes ....

  • That's a barely noticeable blip on their earnings. It's still tremendous that a single app can do that but I do wonder how big the app revenue market really is.

    • $3B is a lot more than just a blip. $1M is just a blip. $3B is significant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altus ( 1034 )

        Their QUARTERLY revenue numbers are around 50 billion. 3 Billion over 8 quarters... yeah, thats pretty much a blip.

        • Three billion dollars can do a lot of useful things. It's not a blip even if your revenue is a trillion dollars.

  • I've paid more for games that gave me far less (cough, World of Warcraft). Apple makes my skin crawl. I feel the same way about Apple as I do about Disco and Herpes.

      • scavenger hunt.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Virtual geocaching.

        That's what it really is - a game of virtual geocaching.

        And geocaching has had steady performance for a long time now.

        Pokemon has also had it out for a long time now. And let's not forget while it seems boring now, that's just because they don't have the server farm to handle it yet. Japan and China have yet to be connected, mostly because there just aren't enough servers out there yet.

        Once Niantic has finally activated the game world wide, then you're going to see content improvements. A

        • Now that I think about it, geocaching is a really good way to put it.

          A local flower shop has a cool mouse statue in back that I never knew about until GO happened. On top of that, I learned some local history and finally realized that some of the headstones were hand-carved when I visited the Cemetery at night trying to back up the gym there.

          And, after the GO side of things, I looked around and noticed the South side was full of solar LED landscape lights, while the North side had very few. Exploring, I f

      • Seriously.

        Lures are like buying a round for your friends, but for like 50 cents and everyone can join in. Plus, I give away team decals with my business cards.

        What were you picturing when you read my post?

  • Pokemon Go to rake in nearly $13 Billion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @05:40PM (#52557513) Journal

    That's what the story should be. If Apple is taking a 30% cut of it's 80% market share, then PG is projected to make $3B/0.24 = $12.5B

    Of course, this may be a bit like looking at the June 20-July 4 numbers for firework vendors in the US and extrapolating that to how much they'll make over a whole year by multiplying that number by 26. This windfall only happens if the game sustains it's frenzy for 24 months. This isn't a normally mobile crowd, and the next big game (or new Xbox/PS) is always right around the corner. I'm not sure that's really a likely scenario.

    • Of course, this may be a bit like looking at the June 20-July 4 numbers for firework vendors in the US and extrapolating that to how much they'll make over a whole year by multiplying that number by 26. This windfall only happens if the game sustains it's frenzy for 24 months. This isn't a normally mobile crowd, and the next big game (or new Xbox/PS) is always right around the corner. I'm not sure that's really a likely scenario.

      A twenty year old franchise, one with a steady history of money making games, m

      • Fireworks have been around in the US for a couple hundred years too - not once has the two week period leading up to a July 4th been extrapolated to annual sales directly.

        I have no doubt that the P/Go app will continue to generate revenue - probably good revenue. But to imagine that even 10% of the vast majority of bandwagon jumpers are going to continue the game - and pay for it on a regular basis - is sheer folly. I'll be surprised if they hit 1/2 the 13B in 2 years - which would be less than the jump in

        • Fireworks have been around in the US for a couple hundred years too - not once has the two week period leading up to a July 4th been extrapolated to annual sales directly.

          Since you lack reading comprehension, I'll point out that I agreed with you in my original reply.

          But to imagine that even 10% of the vast majority of bandwagon jumpers are going to continue the game

          I'll repeat myself since you seem to have failed to grasp my point the first time - Pokemon Go players are, by and large, not bandwagon

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xvan ( 2935999 )
      That's only for apple players (I don't know what's the ratio of paying [ Android | Apple ] freemium paying players )

      • The Play store takes the same cut as Apple (30%), though the recent "long term developer" discounts would have that fall to as little at 15% on both platforms. I suspect that if the simpletons writing the fluff piece don't understand the peaking kind of demand for this game, they wouldn't have considered the out-year rate reductions which are planned.

    • I liken it to MAFIAA (Music And Film Industry Association of America) projections. Every movie is projected to be a big hit, then there are those that only make 10% of their cost, if that.

      Who knows, though? Pokemon has been an enduring brand for 20 years. There's even a Pokemon store in my local mall. Maybe this "free" game will be a cash cow spreading the wealth to Apple and Google.

    • These games always disturb me a bit-- the "free" games that let you buy some sort of credits. I haven't played the game, so I'm wondering what you can get with "PokéCoins".

      Because it seems to me that a game where you buy credits would fall into one of two groups. Either (a) the game developer intentionally included some game mechanic that is unpleasant, that most people would not want to spend time on, and is selling the credits as a method for bypassing that mechanic; or (b) the game developer inte

  • River in Egypt (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @05:44PM (#52557529) Journal

    This is Apple trying to deflect attention from their apparent slowdown in growth. People are selling ahead of the quarterly earnings report next week, which is not predicted to be good.

  • Guardian is reporting that Apple will "rake in $3 billion in revenue from Pokemon Go in the next one to two years as gamers buy 'PokeCoins' from its app store, according to analysts."

    If we extrapolate this trend out to 50 years, apple will make at least $150 billion in revenue not counting inflation. There is no reason to think this is a fad that will be over in 2 weeks...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Macrat ( 638047 )

      There is no reason to think this is a fad that will be over in 2 weeks...

      How much do you hear about Angry Birds these days?

      • You mean that game that just had a film adaptation grossing $343 million released in May of this year? Or do you mean a different game? If we extrapolate out the revenues from angry birds out 50 years, we are looking at a $13.5 billion just in yearly angry bird movies.
  • I've never really understood the fun of a game where someone can dump in a bunch of money and get just as far as you have, even if you have put hours and hours into it. I don't play video games often, but when I do that is an element of real life I don't want in them.

    • Most games in the mobile market the last few years have been following this formula. Appeal to the human desire to gather and collect things, get them hooked of going through motions of it and then run microtransactions at them later when they are fully addicted.

  • And that's just f-ing ridiculous, as a developer you don't have any choice but to go through iOS app store, so you'll always have to give money to apple.. 30% off all in-app purchases is really REALLY ridiculous, they are just a bunch of thiefs, as always riding on the back of others.. (just like almost all of their products just being ripped from others and put in a nice shiny cover and sold)..

    • Apple covers a lot of things with that 30% such as credit card processing fees. Payment providers usually charge a minimum amount on each transactions which makes $1.00 transactions very expensive. This isn't to say that Apple isn't making a ton of money off this, but that most developers see it as a pretty good deal. Otherwise you'd see tons of third party app stores popping up on Android where Google also takes their 30%.

      • That's very generous of Apple! And there are a ton of app stores on Android, but they're having trouble taking off because the Play store is always there by default (lol remember IE?)

    • For most "developers" it is cheaper than selling it themselves.

      They don't need a web site, customer data, credit card processing, a sales rep, customer service, an accountant etc. p.p.

      30% only sounds much if you never have run your own company and have no clue how much that costs.

      Also: subscription based in app purchases got reduced to 10% fee half a year ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        For most "developers" it is cheaper than selling it themselves.

        They don't need a web site, customer data, credit card processing, a sales rep, customer service, an accountant etc. p.p.

        30% only sounds much if you never have run your own company and have no clue how much that costs.

        Also: subscription based in app purchases got reduced to 10% fee half a year ago.

        Not to mention having to maintain a customer database so customers can get their product over and over again or download updates, and maintaining that

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