While Pokémon GO may not be all over the news as it was in the distant past (well, it feels distant), it's continued to evolve and keep a sizeable audience engaged. Its developer Niantic then released its second tie-in with Nintendo this year with Pikmin Bloom, which is a rather charming and low-pressure addition to the 'walk and things happen on your phone' AR genre.
Niantic has now joined in the Holidays festivities with some stats for its games, and they show some dizzying numbers. It's a reminder that plenty of players are still enjoying these apps.
While the Pokemon GO stats in their billions are impressive, there's clearly a decent amount of activity in Pikmin Bloom too, even though it's very unlikely to hit the same level of popularity.
Are you still playing either of these games when heading out for a walk? Let us know, as always, in the comments.
[source nianticlabs.com]
Comments 32
Please keep Pikmin Bloom alive. Thanks.
Me when I saw Pokémon Go's stats: Lol how pathetic.
Me when I saw Pikmin Bloom's stats: Oh my god, do I even have a life anymore? Has my life become Pikmin Bloom? What have I done? WHAT HAVE I DONE!?
With a playtime of 55hrs Pikmin Bloom is my favorite game of the year no joke haha
Does anyone else realize that if you have an iPhone you can add steps in health and they come up in pikmin bloom? I walked 9,000,000 steps yesterday’s
@Baircade I like pikmin bloom but how do you spend 50+ hours in it?
@OnlyItsMeReid You don't actually "play" it. It's more of an app than a game. As for the amount of time played, If Baircade played since the North American Launch for at least one hour a day, it would add up to 55 hours. That's just the time in the foreground, could be much longer if you include background time.
@nitrolink
A: I doubt it takes that many resources to develop for, so I think Niantic will keep it alive for much longer.
B: I think Nintendo may fund the game to keep Niantic to keep it afloat as long as possible
C: Pikmin's creator isn't transphoic (I hope to ANY GODS THAT ARE LISTENING that Miyamoto isn't.) so there's less people turned off by the politics of the creator.
@HotGoomba WE ARE PIKMIN! HEAR US MOO!
@Zarudepie You walked 9 million steps yesterday? Respect.
Level 37. Pikmin mad I am
The fact that there have been more Pikmin grown than flowers planted shows an issue with how Pikmin Bloom works
@Kieroni I guess people don't understand how to plant flowers? I've grown 307 Pikmin, but I've planted 179,414 flowers.
@Octane the issue is 1 the cumbersome menu navigation to turn flowers on/off 2 the flowers die way too fast and 3 growing pikmin is orders of magnitude more rewarding.
@Octane Theres little incentive to grow flowers, since they disappear after a few days which sorta defeats the point of them. But I am not sure how best they could remedy that.
Also, I dunno about others, but recently I have had bloom not actually record my steps or flowers when I set flower planting to ON, and I think it might be cus my phone is unable to handle as many pikmin getting stuff in the background and planting flowers at the same time? It was completely fine until i reached a pikmin squad size of about 20, then it just refused to track flowers, and even stopping it by itself completely after 15 minutes and saying I planted like 80 flowers, despite walking 15k - 20k steps a day at work with my phone running bloom in the background in my pocket.
I have no clue what the cause could be other than my phone not being super duper top of the line or anything, which suck if thats the case. So as a result I just haven't been growing flowers at all and as such my progression outside of actual step count has hit a wall.
I love pikmin bloom I want to be invested but the game needs some seriois improvements before I can get back into it.
On a less nintendo-y note I've been really impressed with Niantic lately. Eespecially when you take the stats for niantics other games, into account (though, to be fair, there's a lot of overlap especially in steps/distance related goals) as well as their lightship platform, developer initiatives, Qualcomm snapdragon AR bluueprint, and "dozens" of games in the pipeline.
Compare side by side with bigger ccompanies like Meta and there's no contest where my vote for the future of "the metaverse" lies.
@Octane Part of it that there's pretty much no point to plant flowers. You get so few coins for it, and none of the permanent upgrades are purchasable with them.
@Kieroni Yeah, I agree, it isn't very rewarding. But you get something at least. And it also gives you additional fruits and seedlings, which also means more friendship points for your Pikmin when you send them to collect it. And it gives you a 10 to 30% bonus when growing seedlings. That's saving at least 3000 steps on a huge seedling.
But still. I can easily plant 1000+ flowers in a 10-15 minute walk. So even if I only did that once a week, I wouldn't be able to grow enough Pikmin to keep up with that number, let alone double it, like those stats show. I can only assume that the vast majority of people never plant flowers.
I downloaded Pikmin Bloom on day 1, but I still have yet to actually use it. Arlo was right, they picked a bad time to release it. Weather's just too cold now for going for a walk.
Just started playing piking bloom, it does give me the energy to get out and walk a bit, seeing as I really like computer games.🏃♀️🏃🕺
I’m really enjoying Pikmin Bloom, currently Level 34
I love Pikmin Bloom. Given me more motivation to go out walking 😊💕
Pikmin bloom is a fun thing to do on my walk home from school but I feel like they could change a few things, like what if you only planted one flower at a time(instead of these big clumps) , but they were permenant
I definitely played Pokémon GO more this year than in any previous year. The game has a great community and there’s always something fun going on in the game. It’s kept me walking and exploring outdoors during this pandemic too, which has been a nice distraction.
Yes I'm still a Pokemon Go player and it's still very active.
Have 2 accounts on pikmin, one with
77,856,740,992 steps and the other
90,734,451,386 steps 👀
I'm enjoying Pikmin Bloom quite a bit, and haven't touched Pokemon Go much since its release. The flower planting has been enjoyable, but I do think it could be better if flowers disappeared quicker. To maximize planting, walk areas need to be clear and I'm finding myself waiting the full week to go out for a decent walk. I'm in the lower 30s in terms of level and currently need to plant 6,000 flowers to level up. I can only assume I'll be required to plant even more flowers from time to time as I grow in level, so I would like the flower life cycle to be shorter. Rather than a week, maybe cut that to 3 days. I would never want the flowers planted by players to be permanent. That would break the game in a way that would ruin the experience.
Pikmin Bloom just happened to come out when I decided I needed to take walks more often, and so help me it's helped me stay on track. I don't care DEEPLY whether I get all the Pikmin, or if I make that flower down the street bloom, but it's enough of a draw to make me occasionally detour an extra block or two, or put in a couple thousand extra steps on community days. I know I'm being manipulated, but I'm getting more exercise, so I'll call it a win.
@Zarudepie WHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
THEN HOW MANY STEPS DOES MY DAD MAKE?!?!?!
(My dad goes running)
@Jango-Forest I would walk more if you could add more than 90,000 at a time
Don't kill Pikmin Bloom, Niantic. There are a few things that could be added to incentivise flower planting and clearing challenges, but it's great and worked better on day 1 than Pokemon Go does after 5 years
I don't think Pikmin is doing good, I think alot of people downloaded/tried/deleted it.
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