Ever since the first Pokemon games were released in 1998, all that most fans wanted was to be the very best, like no one ever was. We wished that Pokemon were real creatures that we can train and have as companions. And have the occasional fight, but actually having two animals fighting for our amusement seems to make most of us uncomfortable.

Flash forward 18 years later in the month of July, our prayers were finally heard (sort of). Niantic Labs made the mobile game "Pokemon Go" which took the world by storm. For those of you who have not used it, it's basically an augmented reality game that has you walk around your actual town, city, etc. and catch Pokemon. And it was uncanny how, the Pokemon looked as real as you could get and it felt like they were really in front of you. And because of it's popularity, more often then not, their system would crash and everyone would have to reboot their app or wait to go at it again the next day.

This game was so popular that people would always have it on while they were working at retail stores, it caused a lot of controversy when people used it while driving, and it probably made people more elitist when they picked a team to be a part of; Valor, Instinct, and Mystic.

But now that Pokemon Sun and Moon has been released for the Nintendo 3DS, there has been one question on people's minds; Do people still play Pokemon GO? And if so, is it still as fun?

The short answer to this is... no, people have not been playing it as often as they used to. When Pokemon GO first came out in July, the app was downloaded 45,000,000 times. And last reported, they have lost over 10,000,000 within the next month, and from there on out, it has been slowly declining.

These are following reasons why;

The Pokemon gyms are boring. When the game was first released, you had to go and take over gyms and leave Pokemon to protect them. The problem was people would have ridiculously powerful Pokemon that would always win, thus making people not care anymore about them.
The game was too repetitive. Because there was not a battle system outside of gyms and you couldn't trade, you were forced to grind, catching multiples of everything so you can trade them out for candies to level up the strongest ones. And this leads to point three.
It drained your battery too fast. As you wandered around catching Pokemon, hatching eggs, and hitting up Pokestops, you had to constantly keep the app open, otherwise it didn't count. This would cause your battery life to decrease exponentially.

So, how is Pokemon Go going to thrive now that they have just been slowly declining into obscurity? According to Niantic Labs, they are planning huge update for December. This update would include the following; at least 100 new normal and legendary Pokemon, player-vs-player battles, a trading system, and training your Pokemon.

Will they pull it off? Only time will tell. If these updates actually happen, will you re-sign up? Or if you are new to it, would this be interesting to you?

Is Pokemon GO Still Popular?