"Decreased item drops makes no financial sense for Niantic"

#PokemonGO: It's cynical, but keeping resources scarce is how these games work - they need to encourage a certain level of income to keep the whole thing going.I've played plenty of games where you have the choice between logging in and gradually mining resources, or spending some cash to speed things up, and that's completely fine for a free game.Except Niantic have forgotten about the second part. Because the store is not geared towards this. At all.With even Pidgey having a reasonable chance of busting out and running away, there's no way I'm going to consider spending cash on Pokéballs. And then you have encounters where the fucker attacks/dodges/breaks out 10 times and then runs away. A couple of these in a row and you'll chew through your purchase in minutes, possibly with nothing to show for it.I've seen comments from people who have bought Pokéballs when desperate to catch something, but I think most people will take the same approach as me - just close the app if you run out. This is very risky for Niantic, because this game thrives on routine. Once you stop opening it regularly, the chance it will just stay closed increases.Worse, potions and revives are only available via Pokéstop or level up, so when players run out the only outcome is they will stop battling in gyms. Again this is a huge misstep, because the only correlation between less healing items and revenue is a negative one. I just see gyms as a way of getting coins to buy incubators, but it looks like a lot of players see this as their main focus.I'll avoid the normal hyperbole about how Niantic is killing the app, or that it's already dead, but there is no denying the decrease can only be doing harm.With winter setting in and people already less likely to go out specifically to play, this is really the time for Niantic to be giving people more incentive, not less. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2ggm2jh