Pokemon GO is big. Like, ridiculously huge. In fact, It’s now more talked about on the internet than Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, Battlefield and E3 combined. It is, to put it bluntly, the most popular game in the world right now, absolutely stomping over the likes of Candy Crush Saga and Clash Royale. This original Pokemon Go article can be read over on Game-Debate.
Take a look at the Google Trends chart below and you can see Minecraft has been an incredible performer over the last five years or so. It’s one of the best-selling games ever, shifting over 100 million units and counting. It frankly embarrasses EA’s Battlefield, which has barely caused a blip over the last decade when compared to these other titans.
We can see from E3’s spike each year in June that it’s roughly the same popularity as GTA at its peak; the most obvious indicator yet of why Rockstar would never bother showing a new game there. It is literally bigger than the show itself.
So that’s how those stack up, but what about Pokemon GO? This is a fairly young game of course, launching last week in the US and Australasia, and not even until today here in the UK. In just a week’s time Pokemon GO has become the most popular game in the world and is more used than Twitter, Google Maps, and SnapChat. It’s currently 25 times more popular to search for than Grand Theft Auto, which itself has shifted over 65 million units.
There's no doubting Pokemon is once more a global phenomenon. There are shades of its late 90's popularity to what's going on here, and there's already talk of a live action Hollywood movie.