Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is out now across the globe, and the day one installs number has painted a bit of a rough picture for such a major launch.
According to analyst group Sensor Tower a new finding indicates that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was installed approximately 400,000 times in its first 24 hours. Contrast this with Pokemon GO, Niantic’s previous AR offering, which had exponentially more downloads on day one. Pokemon GO in comparison had 7.5 million installs on the first day.
The report also talked about day one revenue, and based on the reports, there’s a pretty big gulf between the two ARG games. Wizards Unite players spent “at least $300,000” on that first day, while players in Pokemon GO allegedly spent more than $2 million on day one.
Although let’s be honest, Harry Potter doesn’t have the insane global brand recognition that Pokemon does. Everyone wants to make themselves the best Trainer. And even though Harry Potter is a strong literary and film franchise, it just isn’t as well-known across generational gaps like the Japanese RPG franchise. All this considered makes it easy to see how this whole thing went down.
And with such a major day one dip compared to their last major release, there could be other things holding down Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. It’s easy to see that there’s probably some lingering negative influence from badly received titles like Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. And looking at the negative responses to this new ARG online, people are just burnt out after the glut of aggressive monetization and the ARG concept in general.
This is not meant to indicate that the launch of Wizards Unite was not a success, or that the game will not continue to grow, but things are obviously not going to be the biggest hit right out of the gate.
