"Features in Pokemon Go and the shift towards more aggressive monetization in this game."

#PokemonGO: There are lots of features in Pogo, raids, hatching, friends system, buddy system and trainer battle.As the most profitable feature in this game, raiding was not always monetized as hard as we have now. Not long ago, we only have rare Pokemons and legendaries in the raids. Now, we have shiny legendaries, shiny legendaries with exclusive moves, shiny Pokemons with costumes, other raid exclusive Pokemons, which are all locked behind raiding and are often time limited. All of these new raids exclusive contents make us more likely to use premium passes.As almost the second most popular feature, eggs used to only contain rare Pokemons. Now, we have rare Pokemons locked behind eggs, lots of shiny Pokemons that can only be found in eggs and some time limited shiny Pokemons that are egg-locked.What's more, I have found something quite interesting for the other features. The first version of the trainer battle and the friend system are not locked behind a pay wall at all. As a matter of fact, there is no way for you to pay for them. On the other hand, those two features do make you to play this game daily and provide another ways for you to become addicted.Then, there are two new features released recently: buddy system and the second version of trainer battle. As you can see, there is a shift: they have found a way for you to pay for them.From all the analysis above, I think Niantic is shifting their strategy to create more pay-to-play contents. Most of the old features are not here to earn lots of money. They are here to make you addicted to this game by playing daily. They are here to cultivate a large player base for this game. With the popularity of the game, they have succeeded in their goal. And now, since you are addicted in this game, it is time for them to push a more aggressive monetization strategy and create contents which are heavily pay-to-play. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2U6x4Kp