Yup, you read that number right. According to a YouTube video posted by the official user account of Pokemon Go, players all across the globe have indeed walked a staggering 8.7 billion kilometers since the widely popular mobile game was first launched last summer. To put 8.7 billion kilometers into context, that is roughly equivalent to about 200,000 trips around our blue planet.
The Pokemon Go mobile game is a lot of things to different people, but you gotta give credit where it is due, and there is no denying that this release from Niantic has certainly been extremely successful in getting people to get out of their rooms and walk around in their neighborhoods, shopping malls, and towns.
While it is true that strictly speaking, some players may have not actually walked (or ran) while playing the game (they might have been skateboarding, roller blading, bicycling, or riding a car), the distance they collectively covered while indulged in the search for cute creatures with even cuter names is truly remarkable.
Still, the YouTube video posted by Pokemon Go has some fun with that amount of distance. It playfully points out that traveling 200,000 times around the world is about the same as traveling to Pluto, the farthest planet, er, thing in our galaxy. The video also provides an interesting bit of information -- a commercial jet would take over a millennium to actually cover that same distance.
Okay, once we are over the fact that Earthlings did a lot of walking playing Pokemon Go in the last half year, it is worth noting other interesting statistics. For one, players of the augmented reality mobile game managed to capture over 88 billion Pokemon. For context, that is equal to catching over half a billion on a daily basis.
Games developer Niantic is currently busy adding more enhancements and updates to Pokemon Go, which include new Pokemon characters (including a holiday Santa Pikachu), plus an ongoing launch in South Asian markets (especially India). The enhancements should only further improve the gaming experience for current players, and attract those users who have not yet given the mobile game a shot. While it is true that Niantic’s creation is already beginning to give in to the law of diminishing returns, it can still expect some level of activity during the holidays, wherein families are likely to have some free time to go hunting for Pokemon together.