It would be an understatement to say that Pokémon Go is a popular video game, as Niantic’s Pokémon game for smartphones has shattered records, having been downloaded hundreds of millions of times to date, while it is also bringing its creators millions in revenue each day.
So it’s clear that Pokémon Go has been a success, then, and unlike other games like Nintendo’s recently released Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, Pokémon Go has to be played outdoors. And players worldwide have been walking around in their cities on a hunt for those cute little creatures known as Pokémon in Niantic’s augmented reality game, which has probably helped way more people get off the couch and start exercising that any smartphone fitness apps out there.
It’s likely, then, that Pokémon Go players have been walking quite a distance, and game developer Niantic has recently shared some stats that reveal that players have moved around quite a lot on their hunt for Pokémon and in order to perform other in-game activities such as hatching eggs.
And shockingly enough, Pokémon Go players have collectively walked more than 8.7 billion kilometres, which is greater than the distance from planet Earth to Pluto (the outermost planet of the solar system), while this is also equivalent to 200,000 trips around the Earth, which is stunning indeed. Also, players have caught a whopping 533 million Pokémon creatures per day since the game’s release last June, and a total 88 billion Pokémon, which is also eye-catching.
These figures are a significant step up from the one’s Niantic reported last September (trainers had walked “just” 4.6 billion kilometres back then, slightly more than half of the current figure), and are likely to keep growing given the tremendous amount of interest there still is in Niantic’s game, even if the likes of Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will be a strong alternative for many people during the cold winter months, during which gamers are more likely to stay indoors.