what it was, but nowhere near the top of the charts. The game was conceived as a “proof of concept” for the idea of AR-based games, and didn’t feature in-app purchases (IAP) until it had been out for almost three years. In other words, Ingress‘ success would not have predicted the success of Pokémon Go. It is safe to conclude that a very large part of its success is due to the popularity of the original Pokémon trading card games and related toys and video games. A substantial portion of the active users of Pokémon Go are millennials who constituted the core market for the original Pokémon. This is not to say that the originality of the gameplay or the novelty of the technology don’t also contribute to the app’s popularity, but surely its success owes at least as much to the strength of the intellectual property (IP). In this way, the game is similar to Kim Kardashian: Hollywood by Glu Mobile, which was released first as Stardom: Hollywood without the Kardashian connection, and met with limited success. Other celebrity-based mobile games have failed, but the combination of good gameplay and a pop icon worked to make it a blockbuster. Pokémon Go is one of the best
marriages of the real and the digital worlds. It may be the smartest app on your smartphone in terms of what it “knows” about the user and his or her environment. Over the course of the next year, we will see all kinds of companies unveiling games and other apps that merge AR technology with GPS and powerful pop icons. The potential goes far beyond how much money can be made from IAP. Already, companies, such as McDonald’s, are using Pokémon Go to drive traffic to their stores by having their locations virtually seeded with Pokémon Go Pokéstops. We’ve seen real estate listings advertising that a home or an apartment is near a Poké Gym. If you look up a business on Yelp, the app will tell you what Pokéstops are nearby. The game is proving to be a powerful tool for bringing people together, driving foot traffic (good for commerce), and building communities (good for a host of marketing reasons). The game has been credited with increasing awareness of public places and landmarks to which users would normally not pay attention. And let’s face it: A mobile game that actually requires players to be physically active and out of the house has
got to be better than one that rewards couch potatoes for inactivity. Of course, there is a dark side. Lures can be used for good and bad, and there have been reports of people luring victims to a spot for the purpose of robbing them. There is the risk of injury from players not paying attention, whether they are walking or, worse, driving while playing. There is the inevitable concern about user data, made far worse by the fact that a coding error in the initial launch inadvertently gave Niantic access to the user’s entire Google account. And let’s not overstate the degree to which the game encourages physical activity. It’s not like people are getting a cardio workout, and they’re still staring down at their screens. The game has turned out to be more than a “proof of concept” for AR—it also shows the power of Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo), harnessing social media, GPS-powered localization, and mobile phones. IP holders with strong popular brands now know that it is possible to marry SoLoMo technology with a strong IP and drive results. The success of the game is very encouraging for emerging technologies, such as virtual reality and wearable AR devices, including Google Glass and Microsoft’s Hololens. It is important to note that in developing Pokémon Go, Niantic had been gathering metadata for years on geographic locations. It will be difficult for a newcomer to offer an AR experience to rival Pokémon Go without that metadata. Let me finish with another analogy from the toy world. The unexpected blockbuster success of MGA’s Bratz not only made that company rich, but it also awoke the entire toy industry to the possibility that Mattel’s Barbie wasn’t invincible. Similarly, Pokémon Go shows everybody that the much-vaunted AR and the previously disappointing promise of merging the physical and the virtual might not need to be discarded after all. Stay tuned for the avalanche. » Sean McGowan is managing director at Liolios Group. He has been following the toy industry for 30 years, analyzing product trends, cost changes, marketing practices, and other aspects of how products and companies succeed (or don’t). He also follows digital gaming, sporting goods, and juvenile products. McGowan started SMG Leisure in January 2016 to continue this work beyond the parameters of Wall Street.
TOYBOOK.COM | September/October 2016 | THE TOY BOOK 31