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Pokemon Go hands mobile giants their arses with record revenues

Clash of Clans. Puzzle & Dragons. Candy Crush Saga. These are names whispered with fervent respect in mobile gaming circles for their remarkable ability to generate revenue. And now here's Pokemon Go, which has beat the pants of them and then continued to paddle their bare, glowing buttocks.

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Pokemon Go's revenues make other phenomenal mobile games look slow and steady.

According to analyst firm App Annie, as reported by VentureBeat, Pokemon Go has become the fastest mobile game to reach $600 million in revenues.

Pokemon Go hit this milestone between its July 6 launch and the end of September, a period of 86 days. Meanwhile, it took Candy Crush Saga over 200 days to reach the same goal, with Puzzle & Dragons and Clash of Clans taking over 400 and 500 days respectively.

What makes this more remarkable is that Pokemon Go's microtransaction content has been designed to cater to everyone rather than whales, contrary to most free-to-play mobile game design principles.

App Annie also said Pokemon Go accounted for 45% of Android gaming in the third quarter compared to 55% for the next 19 most-used games together - and yet use of other mobile games isn't going down, suggesting Pokemon Go isn't just cannibalising the existing mobile gaming market, but possibly brining in new users.

Although Pokemon Go's growth and revenue are certainly slowing down now, Nintendo and Niantic could probably pack the whole thing up right now and still call it a whopping success. They won't, though; expect new features and content to keep rolling out.

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