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With its arrival in Japan, Australia / New Zealand and the US this week, Pokémon GO has enjoyed plenty of attention online. It's prompted an uptick in Nintendo's share value and plenty of positive comments, though there are undeniably some issues with servers; we've noted crunch periods particularly when the US time zone is jumping online.

While it's clear that the launch in these countries has been mostly a success, early data is starting to suggest that, unlike with Miitomo, the structure and in-app purchases of GO could be lucrative financially. App Annie has started to register its chart data that accounts for full days of GO being on iOS, in particular, and the results are eye-raising.

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On 7th July Pokémon GO was not only the number one free app on iPhone in US, Australia and New Zealand, but it was also the highest grossing. In other words a lot of people are buying Pokécoins, the in-app purchases that have varied uses; that means that on 7th July Pokémon GO also made more money than established earners like Mobile Strike and Game of War - Fire Age. At the time of writing it's still number one in both categories in the equivalent charts for 8th July.

Of course the challenge will be for GO to maintain consistency, and it's also still to roll-out in Europe and other territories, a far from ideal scenario in an industry where global launches are generally desired. The aforementioned server issues, however, are likely to be a key reason behind this staggered release.

It'll be interesting to see how it develops, but it seems that Pokémon GO will do more than simply accumulate a lot of downloads - it could also make The Pokémon Company, Nintendo and Niantic a lot of money.

[source appannie.com]