Niantic did not expect Pokemon GO to become an instant global phenomenon

Although Niantic anticipated that millions of people would eventually play Pokemon GO, the developer did not expect it to become an instant global hit. “When we released Pokémon GO on iOS and Android devices on July 5, we were anticipating that millions of people around the globe would play our new game,” Niantic CTO Phil Keslin said on the official Niantic blog. “What we did not foresee was that Pokémon GO would immediately become a global phenomenon.” Since its debut in July, Pokemon GO has been downloaded more than 500 million times across iOS and Android devices.