Fresh Data Shows That Four Out Of Five Pokémon GO Players Have Given Up Hunting

I never downloaded it. I've no time for Pokemon. But, hey it makes Nintendo money so whatever it's good in that respect.

The number of people playing that app could never be sustained. All the people walking slowly around the town square staring down at their phones made it seem like the zombie apocalypse had actually arrived, lol.

Its almost as if smartphone "games" lack the meat and substance to bind players on a long term...
Not really surprising really. It is the same fate Miitomo suffered.
Massive hype...until everything has been seen.

But yeah, all in all, its the nature of mobile apps.
They simply aren't made to last.

I'm still hunting, just not on this game.

When Pokemon Stars (Or whatever its subtitle) Switch announced officially, they might pay attention to Switch a lot.

What a summer that was. Still play it every day, but it needs another viral marketing ploy to kick-start it again. Should have been done when the Johto Pokemon came out.

Could happen when the legendaries arrive.

Well we just started about 2 months ago so it's still relatively new to us. Still haven't spent a penny though.

It's worth noting that the chart only goes up to the end of 2016... it's doesn't cover the introduction of Gen 2, which did cause the number of regular players to increase again.

That's kind of inevitable and is probably similar with most Apps a few weeks or so after the initial launch, so this isn't a bid deal. Also, I think the current user numbers are still generally considered impressive.

I downloaded the game to see what it was like. To me, it was a strange world that had Pokemon, but didn't feel like a Pokemon game. I deleted it afterwards.

@Zeargo
Yeah.
No walk, no play.
Fortunately, we can always proper Pokemon games anytime.

The concept is cool but still is a major time and money sink. And the rewards are not that good.

Is it really surprising that an app revolving around being outside has fewer users in the winter?

So 5 million people still playing Pokemon Go. Sounds pretty impressive to me.

This is actually kind of like the popularity of Pokemon in general, except over a shorter timespan... huge popularity at the start, but nothing more than a fad for most people... wasn't long before the fad faded, leaving only the true fanbase remaining.

@DragonEleven
Sad but true.
People nowadays are easily get boring with anything.

The problem is a general lack of content. Catching the same Pokemon over and over is only interesting for so long. Add to that the fact that they had to kill off features to ease up on server strain causing people to make their own tools to replace those features making the server strain worse than it was before. They had to spend too much time putting out fires to get any new content ready in a reasonable time frame, and once they did it was pretty lackluster.

I still open the app from time to time to see what's near my house, but the game was pretty much over for me when they started imposing a speed limit when they already had the "I'm a passenger" button.

@DragonEleven a fad? My sides!

I'm still playing daily. Not actively, but whenever I stroll outside I always have the app on and catching:

1: New Pokémon or those that I still need to evolve.
2: Pokémon with a type that I don't have a gold medal for yet.
3: Pidgey and Weedle to do occasional Lucky Egg evolves for XP.

I rarely attack gyms anymore, but usually have 1 or 2 Pokémon stuck in a local group of gyms. But besides all that, there's definitely interest and activity left in the game among my friends.

I expect that 4 out of every 5 Breath of the Wild players will have stopped playing in 9-or-so months time...

It has yet to be released here officially so I gave up once frequent updates began. Wasn't motivated enough to hunt down a new apk to sideload on a weekly basis because the old version wouldn't run anymore.

5 million is still pretty good, especially given the unfriendly weather around fall and winter. Also people general interest in certain things tend to fade after a while. Even if they release Gen 2 & 3 Pokemon last year, there would still be a drop since new games will come out and distract them from this one.

I still play daily mainly for the goal of reaching lvl 40 or at least 36 (currently 33). A goal that would take another year or two to reach.

Not surprising. The charm of finding Pokémon in the real world wears off pretty fast, and then you realize there's essentially nothing to do with all the monsters you caught. Player-to-player interaction is essentially nonexistent, which is a shame, since it has been a cornerstone of the Pokémon experience for 20 years.

I stopped with the 'game' when the 2,847th Pidgey appeared...

I only still play because there is a pokestop that I can access from my desk at work. So I just plug in my phone and have it on all day. And if I happen to notice a mon I need, then I try to catch it, otherwise I just glance at it every so often to spin the stop.

It only stays fun for so long when 90% of the Pokemon you find are the same garbage, over and over. I can only collect so many Rattata and hatch so many Gligar before there's no point left in trying.

Profits surge during events when Niantic realizes that the game is fun when you can actually catch good Pokemon.

Niantic also lost users with all of their technical issues, poorly though out chances, badly implemented or missing features, blocking 3rd party trackers/maps and shutting down Pokestops. There were a few really fun spots in our area that no longer exist. There was no reason to shut them down. The blindly acquiesced to take-down requests without finding out if there was any merit to them. Events are actually good fun and that's the only time I bother any more. They came too late and are too far in-between.

My commute to work is rich with pokéstops and gyms, and there are frequent Dratini spawns. My area is super competitive and all the gyms are filled to level 10 with 2800+CP from the same 20 or so players from the 3 teams. I'm still having fun holding down gyms, but I just can't imagine that there is any fun to be had for players below 30 (which is a majority of the install base)

I have also given Niantic $0 since I use my daily gym winnings to buy all my stuff. Oh no...

I just realized that I'm what's wrong with the pogo community :/

Maybe if they, I dunno...

1. Let rooted players play again
2. Gives us battling already like was advertised
3. Give us trading, like promised
4. Overhaul gyms and make them more fun to interact with

They might get those numbers up.

I still play, but nowhere near as much as I used to. After I caught all the common G2s, the game's lost its appeal again. I still play daily, but only to get the catch streak bonus (I live nowhere near a Pokestop)

It was a fad, of course it's influence is wearing off now that the fad is over. And yeah, too little too late on updates.

@dsparil How else would you reliably get Ice types?

@Tsusasi If you found out your home or business was part of a mass social experiment, would you want Niantic to take their time deciding if tens or hundreds of people frequently went to your place without your consent?

Admittely stopped to play it ages ago, not even the gen2 update managed to push me back to it.
Anyway I doubt the Pokémon company or niantic are worried, the actual userbase is far from bad and at launch the game got so much attention it pushed back the franchise to be common knowledge; Pokémon GO definitely achieved what it was planned for and even more.

People Play Less Of A Game Over Time Shock!

So, we're talking 20% of 28.5 million players?

That means about 5.7 million people... and that number is staying fairly consistent. (a plateau, if you will) Any app developer would kill for that kind of regular userbase.

For a game that's essentially still in open beta or "early access," (Check the version number.) as new features and new Pokemon get released, we'll see spikes on top of that 5.7 million. (a bonus, if you will.)

This isn't doom and gloom, people. This is stable business!

Having a 8-5 time job does not allow me to play this game very much. Plus I don't have a personal iOS or Android device. Sooooo there is that.

Like any game, you play it and move on after a while.

I never bothered to try it. As a rule I am not a fan of mobile games like this because they never seem to end. I enjoy Games like Fire Emblem Heroes and Pokemon Shuffle but I basically had to just stop Pokemon Shuffle cold turkey because I was playing it at least once a day and I got sick of wasting my time with it. The same thing will happen with Fire Emblem Heroes as well. I enjoy playing them but because I never get that satisfaction of "finishing" the game it starts to feel pointless to me.

@NaviAndMii True, that chart is pretty much the same way every single game holds a player's attention, but Pokémon Go is a mobile game, our mortal enemy (apparently), so we will now act as if this counts just for mobile games, and make with the pointing and mocking! :3

More like Pokemon NO #roasted

@DragonEleven Every single pair of games has blown past ten million units at the very least.
Fad my pasty ***.

Hmm, as @DragonEleven pointed out the figures stop well before the release of Gen2 which is pretty important considering many people would have completed the game a few months in & there isn't too much to do once you've completed the pokédex. To be honest I completed Pokémon Sun a long time ago & haven't really touched it either... hacking in competitive is strong, let hackers battle each other. Not for me.

@DartNocturnal There have been updates & patches every month or so & news drops of upcoming features, the real problem is that none of them really added anything outside of very basic features. Most of us new Gen 2 was coming... but we'd had what, 2 events before it came? And a Gastly event after I already had 3 Gengars was a liiiiiittle too late.

Still play 1-2 times a week with my now 4 year old son. He's so happy there are new Pokemon to catch. It's fun in spurts and gets him to go for a nice long walk, so it's double beneficial - exercise and learning Pokemon names.

@CrazedCavalier You're correct, main series Pokémon games have been & still are competitive with Call of Duty games despite Pokémon only being on one platform (compared to Call of Duty which is multiplatform). Anyone stating actual Pokémon games are/were a fad are damaging their own credibility, not Pokémon's.

Mobile gamers don't stay anywhere for long. They like to roam and graze and then roam again. Honestly I think the game is doing well for what it is.

The biggest response to this graph will be the outcry from 20-somethings and people in their early 30s going "I'M NOT A MILLENNIAL!!"

@CrazedCavalier An average of around 15 million is what is left after the fad... Red and Blue sold over 30 million at the height of the fad, with Gold and Silver selling over 20 million as the fad came to an end... it's a similar pattern to what the chart shows for Pokemon GO.

5 million playersis still huge though, more than 99.9% of mobile games ever see.

@DragonEleven Fads mostly fade from the popular eye. Yu-Gi-Oh was a fad. Justin Bieber was a fad. Pokemon's still alive and kicking.

It's important to note that five million daily users is still a huge number. Any app that explodes out of the gate like that is bound to have a major dropoff - game bugs, slow updates, seasons changing all play a part. But with summer cropping up again, and the game has added a number of new pokemon and events/features - and if they ever incorporate the in-person battle feature - I think it could show a slight uptick in popularity again pretty soon.

Also anyone calling the Pokemon franchise a fad in general is pretty laughable. It just celebrated its 20th Anniversary and had two top selling games last year. It still sells loads of merchandise, etc. It is one of the most popular brands in existence.

I played walking around Disney World, and as I waited in lines for rides. I deleted it after a day.

Not worth it.

Other than more competitive-ish games like Clash of Clans, generally all mobile games have this same behavior. Games on the App Store are always being flushed out of the top charts only after a few days and if they're lucky maybe a week.

That was always going to happen. Me being a Pokemon fanboy ove played it every day but a lots of bandwagon people were always going to drop off

A coworker and I played it a lot when it first launched, going to this local area near work after our shifts for hours. But I just lost interest. He still asks me, non-stop, and no amount of me telling him I don't want to and I don't care to play anymore will help him understand.

He's the 1 still playing for all the people who quit. Now of he'd just leave me alone about it...

@CrazedCavalier I didn't actually say it was a fad... only that it was a fad for some people... they only liked it as a fad, and as it became clear that it wasn't, that view of it faded, so they stopped liking it as a result... hence the drop in popularity.

@CrazedCavalier @DragonEleven Most games will see a drop off from their initial sales figures, especially one that had such a huge boom. While there is logic saying there was a Pokémon fad for a while during the initial boom, the fact that after 20 years the Pokémon is still selling as well as many multiplatform AAA titles pretty much disproves that the game is inherently in itself a fad.

That's of course to vastly oversimplify the actual argument because again, comparing Pokémon to Call of Duty, CoD has seen far bigger sales drops, followed by spikes when new hardware is released. This is not unlike Pokémon... but again, Pokémon has the disadvantage of being tied to one particular platform.

Edit: @DragonEleven Even if we look at Pokémon as a "fad for some people", I'm still not sure that holds up. While it's true that numbers are down from the heady days of the Gameboy Color... isn't everything Nintendo? This was a discussion I was having the Rjejr the other day, numbers without context are completely pointless. With only half the number of 3DS' sold compared to the Gameboy Color it would be a miracle for sales figures to be identical between RBY & SuMo.

@PlywoodStick See, that's just it. They weren't either of those things. It was parks, one of which was WAY out of the way from residential and the other didn't cause any issues either. Just sad pieces of crap that couldn't stand to see others enjoy themselves doing something different and hard for them to understand. A bunch of useless jerks.

The one park had an issue with smokers throwing butts on the ground... for it's entire existence. Along came Pokemon Go players and suddenly they are to blame. No one bothered to mention that there was no increase in butts or garbage... or that some of the GO players had taken it upon themselves to clean up messes that weren't theirs.

So yeah. There was no reason to pull the stops.

At. All.

Also worth mentioning that there were some menacing neighbors that threatened GO players... threatened to fight them... in the public park. Which was about 30 or 40 yards from where they lived. In the day time.

So, yeah.

I stopped playing because it was taking over my walking time. At first it was great: 'I can finally fit gaming into my commute' I'd say to myself. But then the grind sets in and walking should be fun and not a grind. So I deleted it from my phone and have rediscovered my love of stopping every 5 minutes to take a photograph of spring.

I'd get back in on in a shot if they launched a Pokemon Go Stadium for Switch.

@RadioHedgeFund Not sure how "Go" a Stadium game could be on the Switch without it's own data connection or GPS... if you use your phone's GPS & data, you might as well just be playing on your phone. However, a straight Pokémon Stadium on the Switch would be appreciated.

Would've done better if it were more RPG focused and less what it is right now. It should have been a watered down main game experience like Fire Emblem Heroes. You could have very easily just used natural leveling processes with the level cap being at 50. You could have had wild Pokemon battles that would give exp upon defeat. You could have given the Pokemon say... two move slots and the ability to learn new moves after levelling up. You could have allowed trainers to battle and trade, had actual turn based combat that relied mostly on strategy. It really should have been Pokemon Lite. Fire Emblem Heroes was a perfect example of taking a series, and having it keep its soul while still not being the full experience.

@DanteSolablood basically it would import your Go data to Stadium letting you do proper battles with them. It would be a one way sync.

5 million daily users in the US alone? That's called a success folks.

@Kmno it's only a money sink if you choose it to be. There is nothing you can't get in game by just playing.

I've been playing near everyday since it launched and have spent £8 on it because I wanted too. I didn't need too. I've spent way more on games that I've played for far less, and I paid that upfront before I even knew I'd like the game because I had too.

And time sink? No more than any other game really. I actually find it less a time sink that say, Breath of the Wild as I walk half my daily commute so I'm playing whilst I do that. Breath of the Wild and others I have to sit down and make time for.

@RadioHedgeFund I'd rather it import my SuMo data... I'd throw a major fit if a Stadium came out (on the Switch) & it was limited to Pokémon Go. A mobile Go Stadium wouldn't cause as much mental anguish.

The current '90s nostalgia trend for folks in that age range has moved from Pokemon to Power Rangers. That's where I think all those users went.

I actually tried this again fairly recently but never really played it. I still retain that it's fun but doesn't fit with my lifestyle.

I think I will still fire it up if gen 3 rolls around, but I stopped playing because I couldn't find Pokemon in the woods, i.e. the wild, and only in towns and cities. As much as I understand why, it's just not in the spirit of Pokemon for me. If I find a real life cave I want to find some cave Pokemon. If I find an abandoned house I want to find some ghost Pokemon. The way things are, you can't even search for a particular Pokemon type, you just have to get lucky.

Most mobile publishers and developera would kill for their game to have 5 million active players in the US.

Don't all mobile games have that sort of drop off in player numbers, as well as games in general to a lesser extent. 1 out of 5 players still playing sounds decent for a mobile game, especially for a mobile game that was insanely popular when it came out.

I've been playing until recently. I'm stopping for now after getting annoyed with the recent water event. No Totodliles showed up at all for me, even though I was finding plenty of Squirtles.

I played a ton and spent money every paycheck, until .... rooted phones were blocked. Jerk move Niantic. I wasn't a GPS spoofer, rooted for other reasons altogether. Plus, Nintendo decided rooted devices can't play Fire Emblem or Mario Run. Frustrating.

Still love the game but the last update left me unable to log in for nearly a week and now its buggy and data hungry.

I was one of the rabid fans in the begining. I would play all the time to see what I found. I even would have it out when we went out of town to see what new stuff I found.

Drop off one occurred 2 months in when I realized I was only seeing the same 5 Pokémon. Even having played for hours a day in that 2 month time, I saw 2 Charmander, 1 dratini, and pretty much Tatyana , evee, and pidgy.

Drop off 2 was a week after that. I never got into gyms(still don't see why their can't be gym leaders to fight, rather than playing hold the fort). I maybe captured 6 before I realized that's not really fun to me. I really wanted the battle against others aspect. It seemed that most gyms were filled with bots that had somehow gotten 2700+ poke that never even spawn. And they were always stacked 4-5 poke deep. Why slog through that to get coins to use that I didn't want anyway? I just wanted to find Pokémon and have battles with people.

The last straw was the speed limit. I used to bike ride as a good way to hit a lot of stops and see what Pokémon were out in other places. Without that I was really just walking in a mile radius seeing what I always see. I walk my dog daily, and I open it to hit a couple stops and maybe capture a Pokémon that happens to come out, but not active anymore. They clearly have lots of users, I just wish the game actually was more of a game and had some features to it.

You get what you pay for I guess

@Tsusasi Wow. I guess in that case it's almost like a safety precaution to pull the location. Nothing like that ever happened around here...

@Pod You would get more complaints from those in their early 30's not wanting the title. It is what it is.

@Priceless_Spork I wrote a few articles' worth of posts about that topic. It never went anywhere, most people don't want to get into that stuff, or wave it away by labeling it as "conspiracy theory."

I've never been able to try Pokemon Go as of yet due to my phone platform. This Pokemon fan has had to observe the phenomenon in third person. While I appreciate what the game is, it could have been so much more. I'm not asking for an exact clone of the games on mobile devices, but I think the game could have benefited from actual leveling mechanics, battles, etc. Instead of the feel of being a trainer "in real life", it looks more like a collect-a-thon to me.

I'll be one of the giver uppers. Just not much of a game once the novelty subsides.

@Rumncoke25 Afraid to say that the 2700cp+ pokémon in the gym weren't bots, just hardcore players that levelled their pokémon quickly. My local town has the same issue with pidgeys etc. but I occasionally take the bus to another local town which has a much wider variety. That's the real point of the game, heading out to different places, getting a bit of exercise.

Can't say I blame you for dropping it though, doesn't sound like the game was for you to begin with.

I haven't touched it in months. Pokemon Go was a weird beast. It wants me to play a game, but it also wants me to go outside and explore. I feel like it defeats the purpose of both of those activities.
A real game I can experience regardless of where I turn it on, Pokemon Go I can't play unless there are Pokemon or stops around.
Going outside and exploring can be nice and enjoyable, but what is the point if my face is in my phone the whole time trying to catch or battle whatever?
I tried to support Nintendo's mobile gaming experiment with Pokemon Go, Fire Emblem, and Mario; but honestly, I recently deleted all the gaming apps from my phone. The mobile gaming industry is all throw away software that tries to make money in the moment before people without attention spans move on to the next thing. I'll stick with my dedicated gaming systems.

I still play a bit here and there. My work is right next to a Stop, so I can hit it as often as business allows. The recent water festival event got me hugely back into it since I was finally able to catch some different Pokémon I rarely see. I finally got to evolve Kabuto, Omanyte, Seel, Poliwhirl, and got pretty damn close to evolving Magikarp as well. But actually finding time to play, especially having a newborn son now, has been difficult so I've tried uh... other means that have made the game more playable for someone who can't leave the house or work much, which has been great for my wife as well who hasn't had the energy after long days of taking care of him while I work.

Call me what you will but it's been far more enjoyable than catching the same Pidgeys and Rattata and Sentret over and over and over and over and over and over and ... you get the idea

I think they should have waited until summer 2017 to launch it. That way they could have had everything (plus more gens) ready to release in better spanned out times. It was so glitchy and there just wasn't enough content to keep everyone happy for more than two months. It's sad!

I saw several young hip people out playing it again today. I asked if it was time for Pokémon hunting again, and they said yeah, because the weather is nice.

Maybe a good bit of users will return once it's convenient.

Articles like this have all the flavor and sustenance as the half-baked "The new WOW-killer" articles that finally seemed to have died off. Did Pokemon GO peak early? Absolutely. Was it played by one crap ton of people who previously wouldn't consider playing a Pokemon game at all? Hell yes. Are only 5-6 million users actively playing it right now? Ye-- Wait, ONLY? Seriously, I want Nintendo's problems.

Like a lot of others, I quit a few weeks in when they ruined tracking. It is pointless to play now.

@DanteSolablood What about the DS? That's sold more than any other Nintendo console, but the main Pokémon game pairs on the system still didn't pass the 20million mark. That just goes to prove that console sales do not have that substantial of an impact on the popularity of Pokémon games.

Did you not know people who only liked Pokémon just because it was the current popular thing? I knew loads of them.

@DragonEleven The difference is that people still play even the first generation of Pokemon today, and each generation will be timelessly remembered. Whereas no one is going to be playing Pokemon Go 10 years from now (if it still exists), and it will be cast off into the dustbin of history. It's the same way with all mobile games, they're races to the bottom that cannot stand the test of time.

If you think that's bad, you should see the interest in Ingress. That was fun for a little while, but like all mobile games, it started to become a chore and I said, "Forget it".

If they add 'chance for shiny versions' of everything and change the spawn points to 'real random' instead of set points that just change. Then maybe i'd look at it again. But having to walk to the exact same spot to catch the exact same stuff every time drove me away from it. No fun like that at all. IT should have been like walking around in grass in pokemon games.

@DragonEleven I think the mistake you're making is confusing the term "fad" with "new" in terms of the mainstream pokémon games, while there may be a sales drop-off from Generation One, it's still in the AAA league of sales 20 years on... many huge gaming properties have come & gone in that time, yet Pokémon is still around. There may have been a fad initially, but the game & it's overall popularity is not.

As for the console sales, the GB/GBC is not far behind the DS & Gen One simply had more games to sell for it's generation, lest we forget that in it's home territory Red & Green were released... then an updated Pokémon Blue came out later & was largely repurchased (not saying this is the ENTIRE reason, but is a small mitigating factor).

Even then, some Call of Duty games have dropped nearly 10m sales in the space of 3 years (Black Ops II to Ghost) despite being on more platforms that it's previous version... if Pokémon took 10 years to do the same (but without the help of additional platforms), which one is the fad?

@DanteSolablood Again... I'm not saying it was a fad, only that people treated it as a fad... that doesn't mean it's not still popular, only that some people only liked it initially because it was the popular thing at the time.
I don't understand how you could have not experienced that... were you living under a rock?

You just seem to be grasping at straws in a poor attempt to avoid associating Pokémon's initial popularity with fad mentality.
The Japanese release of blue would not account for such a vast difference in sales... excluding it would drop the total by only a few million at best.
Your Call of Duty example is also nonsense, as they've seen an overall increase over their lifespan... one or two have seen a drop in sales, but that is completely different.

Was to be expected. The Go hype is over!

@DragonEleven It seems the only straws being grasped are those in your strawman arguments. Not only did I agree that there had been a sales drop-off after Generation One, but I only sited Pokémon Blue as a "small mitigating factor". As usual you're very sharp at knocking down your own self-constructed arguments.

Interesting to note however, that you state losing the sales from Blue in Japan would "drop the total by only a few million at best." The difference between Gen One & Gen Two was what, just a few million? Damn what a hard straw grasp that was.

Getting back to the main point however, on the odd occasion I popped out from under my rock friends were not dropping from the game as it was no longer popular... this might have been your experience but mostly mine dropped off due to complaints of repetitive gameplay & losing their pokémon in later generations.

There were also those that picked up Pokémon because it was something very new & had good word of mouth and simply didn't enjoy it enough to keep up with the game after the Gen One... but that isn't fad mentality either. That's trying something new.

I will theorise there may be an explanation for our differing experience though. I was in college by the time Gold & Silver were released. Perhaps you had to be younger to get the experience?

I certainly remember the Transformers fad followed by the animé fad.

@DanteSolablood The difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2 was closer to ten million... reducing Gen 1 by a few million would still leave it substantially above Gen 2.

Repetitive gameplay is a complaint seen in every franchise, but that does not correlate with a substantial drop in popularity like we saw with Pokemon... and the loss of Pokemon between generations would only have applied to the Gen 3 drop, not the Gen 2 drop.

And "because it was something new and had good word of mouth" is fad mentality in a nutshell! No new game has such a huge peak in popularity without fad mentality being involved... they usually peak at least a few instalments in.

It does sound like you missed the fad mentality of the Pokemon games due to your age... the target audience was primary school age, so that's where the fad mentality would have been most noticeable... I got Pokemon Blue around my 9th birthday, so I was right in the middle of it.

@DragonEleven I believe Gen 1 to Gen 2 was about 8.2 million I believe, but what's a few million here & there?

I disagree that buying something because it's new & has good word of mouth is inherently fad mentality, that's simply human nature to want to try something. You could use that description to say that peer pressure is "fad mentality".

I think the difference here might just be your opinion of fad mentality stretches to people buying things because they're genuinely excited by them... yours is a bit more broad. Yo Yo's were one of the big new fads but they'd been around for a loooong time before they caught on, same with Beanie Babies.

Either way, it doesn't matter much in the scheme of things as Pokémon's sales are settled & the TCG is pretty much dead where it belongs. Hopefully Go will find it's niché and keep on getting generation updates that you can deny are in the works.

@DanteSolablood You're mixing up fad mentality and general popularity... things typically grow in popularity over time until they establish a stable fanbase... it would form a graph with a roughly hyperbolic curve to it's peak followed by a steady decline... spikes in that graph would be the result of fad mentality, which can occur at any point, even at the very start, as was the case with Pokemon.
The only reason for there to be such a spike in popularity at the start of a franchise's lifespan would be fad mentality.

Also, just because the TCG has faded from the public spotlight does not mean it's dead... it was one of the most prominent aspects of the fad mentality at the time, but is still going strong within the fanbase.
And I never said Gen 2 wasn't in the works, only that the evidence at the time was inconclusive, and that it was a bad idea as it would have needed to be handled carefully... and I stand by that, as I don't think they done a very good job with how they introduced Gen 2, and think the game will suffer in the long term as a result.

@DragonEleven Actually in many parts of the World the Pokémon TCG is effectively dead. This does not mean that cards are not available & there are no organized events , but without significant travel it is entirely impractical. This is pretty much the case in most of the UK/Europe. This is not an uncommon situation - in 2015 a friend and I placed 4th & 9th Nationally in Dice Masters - the following year there was no competitive scene in the UK.

I am a competitive TCG/CCG player just to confirm.

As for your definition of fad, I can see where you are coming from... does seem that it was a pretty minor fad as most examples that can be found of fads/fad mentality end with the fad/target of the mentality fading into reasonable obscurity.

As per the definition: "Fads are things or behaviors that have achieved short-lived popularity, but fade away.[1] Fads are often seen as sudden, quick spreading, and short-lived.[2] Fads could include diets, clothing, hairstyles, toys, and more. Some popular fads throughout history are toys such as yo-yos, hula hoops and dances such as the Macarena and the twist".

I can see where your spike comes into the equation, though "extremely popular" to "not quite as extremely popular" does seem to be the mildest form.

As for the Gen 2, I think pretty much everyone was aware of Gen 2 models & background spawning changes going ahead. As far as Gen 2 rollout, there have been next to no technical issues so far. I am still getting adequate numbers of both Gen 1 & Gen 2 pokémon.

I'm still a hunter! I play everyday. Gotta catch that daily pokémon and get that daily pokéstop.

I only play more than 20 min once or twice a week though. But it's been winter and freezing cold, now that spring is here and summer is on the way, I'll be playing more!

That said, they need to bring in trading, battling (preferably with real moves!), EV training, maybe even natures and another generation or two.

That's the thing with apps vs. dedicated gaming platforms; building up a "hardcore" fanbase just doesn't appear to happen on mobile phones. There aren't any qualities to a phone that makes people hand onto them for longer than a year to form a bond, thus bond with the software like you see with PCs and consoles.