Niantic stats update: Pokemon Go is still strong, but how is Ingress Prime doing?

Are you still playing Pokemon Go? What about grandfather Ingress?

Geek Native got chatting with VPNOverview after they did a study on which apps Americans delete the most often about Niantic’s augmented reality games Pokemon Go and Ingress.

Update: 13th – This is US data only.

Spoiler, Americans are prone to deleting social media apps from their phone and messenger apps like Telegram, Discord, and Skype are also strong candidates for the deleting finger of doom. Do Niantic’s game apps do any better?

This blogger is an Ingress player, still, but let’s look at Pokemon Go first and US data, the most famous of the Google escapee (a scarce thing) gaming company’s success.

Pokemon Go is still strong, with millions playing, although our six months of data up to January, and there’s a lull into the festive period and the start of the new year. I imagine both games will get popular again as the weather improves.

If you’ve not played Ingress for ages, then a very quick update is this – it’s now Ingress Prime, with a new back-end that’s allowed updates, but a new front-end that, if you’re change adverse you’ll struggle to like. If you are stuck with it, then it’s already second nature.

There’s now a third faction, in Red, but entirely evil and automated with the ability to cross links. It’s new, and some players love having something new to battle with, but the red spreads like the red weed of Mars across the battle-scarred Earth and some hate the disruption.

You can hack with drones now, or scout, a relief to players in rural areas, generate extra items by walking and trading items into cubes, and the next update notes talk about completing tasks for bounties.

Once again, the data is for the US.

VPNOverviews data shows thousands of monthy downloads, but a big drop over Christmas, and about ten thousand daily active users.

I’m really not sure if 10k players is more or fewer players than I expected. My local Edinburgh experience is that the local Enlightened team is much depleted after the COVID lockdown shuttered our social events and mutual frustration with cheats on both sides.

That said, it does feel possible the new red faction and Niantic’s new efforts to give us something to do almost every week is working on adding energy back into the game.

Update 13th March – For clarity, I’ve added an update to confirm this data is US only.