Pokémon Go is taking over and here’s why

That feeling that everyone was suddenly playing Pokémon Go when it launched a little more than a year ago? That wasn’t just a feeling. Its massive launch and rise was by far the biggest in the past year, and no other apps have come close, according to app store data estimates.

Just three weeks after it launched last July, Pokémon hit a high of more 90 million downloads in one week, according to data from app measurement company Priori Data. Recently, weekly downloads have declined to just more than a million, according to Priori, which estimates downloads using Google and Apple app store rank and data provided by partners.

Remember Pokémon Go? That game you downloaded last summer?

You might be surprised, or maybe even impressed, to find out that millions of Americans are still using the app every day, according to comScore’s latest mega data report.

It’s as true in tech news as it is in politics: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Despite reports on Saturday to the contrary, Pokémon Go is still coming to the Apple Watch.

Pokémon Go’s creators want the hit mobile game to get people out of the house and exploring their neighborhoods. A new study confirms that’s really happening.

In “Influence of Pokémon Go on Physical Activity,” researchers from Microsoft Research and Stanford University studied, over the course of a month, how many steps were recorded by the Microsoft Bands — wearable activity trackers — belonging to Pokémon Go fans. The most engaged fans of the game walked 25 percent more than they did before Pokémon Go’s release.

On a recent episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Niantic CEO John Hanke talked about the company’s hit game Pokémon Go and the new features that are in the works.

You can read some of the highlights from their discussion at that link, or listen to it in the audio player above. Below, we’ve posted a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation.

On the latest episode of Recode Decode, Niantic CEO John Hanke said he sees augmented reality as an important complement to his company’s guiding philosophy, that games should happen off the couch and outside of the home. In the case of Pokémon Go, players have to travel — including to places they may never have visited before — to find and catch all the Pokémon in the world.

“From the very beginning, our games were about encouraging people to go outside and see interesting places,” Hanke said. “So [I have] mixed feelings about people looking at their screen while we’re trying to lead them out into the park where they can see the statue and trees and nature.”

Coming off the launch of Pokémon Go in July — a runaway success that exceeded his most optimistic expectations — Niantic CEO John Hanke says he’s “exhausted, but elated.” He and his team also know that the work has only just begun.

“It’s been a busy two months, so we’re now happy that we’re kind of stabilized and able to start being a little more thoughtful about the next set of features that we want to build,” Hanke said on the latest episode of Recode Decode.

Don’t have time to catch ‘em all?

Well, that’s okay. Software maker Avira has come up with a way to safely give your phone to your kids or friends to play Pokémon Go for you.

The large bay windows offer a great view of nearby Squirtles, while the corner store downstairs is a great place to get eggs. Plus, it’s a PokéStop.

Such talk is not just the stuff of comedy anymore as a growing number of real estate ads are noting Pokémon Go amenities alongside real-world details such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

If the first rule of Pokémon Go is “Gotta catch ‘em all,” the second rule is you are going to need to bring an extra battery to do so.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the success of the power-draining app has led to a surge in sales of external battery packs. In fact, sales over the last two weeks are double those of a year ago, with 1.2 million portable battery packs sold, according to NPD.

We all know Pokémon Go can be addicting. Well, it was apparently so addicting for Japanese gymnast Kohei Uchimura that he has already racked up a 50,000 yen (nearly $5,000) cellphone bill traveling in Rio.

Uchimura may be a gold-medal favorite at the Olympics, but he clearly has a lot to learn when it comes to tech. As savvy global travelers are aware, there are a bunch of ways to avoid big overage charges when traveling overseas.

On a recent episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, The Verge’s Sean O’Kane spoke with Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode about the meteoric success of Pokémon Go and the less-delightful concerns about GoPro’s future.

You can read some of the highlights from Sean’s discussion with Kara and Lauren at that link, or listen to it in the audio player above. Below, we’ve posted a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation.

Think you’re confused by the Pokémon Go phenomenon? Not as confused as Nintendo investors.

Shares of the Japanese company fell by nearly 18 percent on Monday, a roughly $6.4 billion drop, after Nintendo told investors that the viral mobile game would have a “limited” impact on its business. Investors sent Nintendo’s stock soaring last week when the game first arrived.

Foolishly spending most of the last few weeks with my family, I missed the early days of the Pokémon Go craze.

Intrigued, though, I was more than eager to take part in this week’s Pokémon Pub Crawl in San Francisco to get a crash course in what everyone else had been up to.

We already knew Pokémon Go was pretty popular, but now it is officially one for the record books.

Apple confirmed Friday that the game had set a new App Store mark for first-week downloads, but declined to give specific numbers or say which app had previously held the record.

Yes, you like playing Pokémon Go (when Pokémon Go is working) on your phone.

But you say you really like the idea of strapping on a pair of Google Glass-like goggles and then running around Central Park looking for Vaporeon?

Good news! You’ve created a crazily viral megahit mobile app!

Bad news! You need to support a crazily viral megahit mobile app.

How does Pokémon Go work? What are the privacy concerns around it? And, most importantly, what is the best Pokémon?

On the latest episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode and Sean O’Kane endeavored to answered all these questions and many more. The buzz around the augmented reality mobile game is so strong that it wrested control of the podcast away from our originally planned discussion topic, GoPro.

After Pokémon Go become a veritable cultural phenomenon, some enterprising souls took to Craiglist to cash in on it, peddling their success with the mobile game.

Now a Silicon Valley unicorn wants in on that trend. Thumbtack, a company that provides an online marketplace for expert services (a Craigslist with more of a tech focus, if you will), just added listings for Pokémon Go experts.

It seems as though everyone in America is playing Pokémon Go. For now, our best estimate is about 9.5 million daily active users.

Let us explain how we got there.

A version of this essay was originally published on LinkedIn.

The texts and tweets started rolling in a few days ago. Folks like @RichBTIG asked me: Is Pokémon Go the next Draw Something? Or the next Candy Crush?

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

No, it’s not the first, and no, it’s not the best. But there is no question that the incredible success of the Pokémon Go game is an absolute watershed moment for augmented reality.

So, you downloaded Pokémon Go.

First off, congratulations! You’re getting in on the ground floor of a new kind of technology that could radically transform the way we interact with the world around us. It’s all very exciting.

Augmented reality — tech that lets digital worlds interact with our physical one — is Google’s Moby Dick.

Did the company let a whale slip through its fingers?

Niantic Labs, the company behind the sudden smash-hit game Pokémon Go, says that it never intended for the game to get full access to users’ Google accounts.

According to the company, Google says that the app has not accessed any user data beyond “basic profile information,” and that Google will soon “reduce Pokémon Go’s permission” to only the limited info that it needs to access.