As is obvious, Pokémon Go is taking over the world; Our go-to metric for determining this is that the game is more popular than internet porn right now. The augmented reality app shot up to the top of the iOS App Store charts instantly upon release, and that surge was so great that it is being reported the app had the most downloads during its first week in the history of the App Store, a fact that Apple just confirmed (via The Verge).
There’s no word yet on just how many times the game has been downloaded, but we do have some impressive stats that at least hint at how massively popular Pokémon Go is: It’s currently the top free and top-grossing app on both the App Store and Android’s Google Play storefront, and the game is earning an estimated daily revenue of $1 million to $2.3 million PER DAY.
That amounted to Nintendo’s stock market value climbing by an astounding $7.5 billion dollars. To put this in perspective, Donald Trump is currently worth just a paltry $4.5 billion, according to Forbes. It’s also been estimated that once the game is launched globally and some of its shortcomings (server issues and lack of multiplayer features) are addressed, it could bring in $1 billion annually.
We realize the history of video games is broad and full of many success stories, but that said, it might not be that crazy to say that the world has never seen anything quite like this.
Check out the science and math behind Pokémon Go:
Featured image: Niantic/The Pokémon Company