Pokémon Home Was Downloaded 1.3 Million Times in Its First Week on Mobile

The mobile apps for The Pokémon Company’s new cloud-based service, Pokémon Home, have generated 1.3 million installs globally in their first week of availability, Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence data reveals.

In the seven days following its February 12 release, Pokémon Home amassed an estimated 444,000 of its downloads, or about 34 percent of total installs, from users in the United States. The Pokémon Company’s home territory of Japan was the second best-performing region for installs with approximately 299,000, or 23 percent of all downloads, while Great Britain followed with a 5.7 percent share comprising 74,000 of the total.

The service’s early performance is also signaling that it could present potentially strong source of mobile revenue for The Pokémon Company, with three subscription plans (priced at $2.99, $4.99, and $15.99) drawing in an estimated $1.8 million in user spending so far, representing 94.7 percent of the publisher’s mobile revenue since February 12 (note: this does not include revenue generated by Niantic’s Pokémon GO). The top countries by this metric were again the U.S., Japan, and Great Britain, accounting for 40.8, 35.3, and 3.7 percent of user spending share, respectively.

A Model (Pokémon) Home?

Pokémon Home—which allows players to free up inventory space within Pokémon games across multiple platforms by enabling storage of collected Pokémon in the cloud—is a unique concept, not just for the Pokémon series but for gaming as a whole. Having the potential to influence, change, or even improve the gameplay experience within games such as Pokémon GO or even console titles Pokémon Shield and Sword, Pokémon Home has grown beyond the definition of a “companion app” to become a potential must-have for serious fans.

We’re eager to see if Pokémon Home’s early success pans out in the long run, especially once transfers become available between it and Pokémon GO. If the service continues to demonstrate financial viability, it may encourage publishers of other multiplatform games, particularly inventory-based titles such as MMORPGs, to consider implementing their own paid inventory services as additional revenue sources.