Niantic’s new mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite had no trouble reaching some impressive milestones shortly after it launched, but its estimated launch numbers still show a much slower start compared to Pokemon Go. Both games were able to reach the No. 1 spot in the App Store’s charts shortly after they were released and were downloaded several hundred thousands if not millions of times, though Pokemon Go definitely outperformed Wizards Unite.
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Sensor Tower reported on Wizards Unite’s launch and shared estimates on how many downloads the game boasts and how much money it made in made in the first few hours. According to the estimates from June 21st, a day after the game released in the United States and the United Kingdom, Wizards Unite was downloaded 400,000 times with that number likely gone way up by now. Between the App Store and Google Play, it made around $300,000, according to these estimates.
Those are already some impressive figures, but they’re a fraction of the numbers that Pokemon Go put up when it released back in 2016. Pokemon Go was installed around 7.5 million times in the United States within the first day that it was available, and in the same time that Wizards Unite generated the revenue estimated above, the Pokemon game had made around $2 million. Pokemon Go debuted at the No. 1 spot within the United States App Store while Wizards Unite reached that spot in around 15 hours after release.
The difference between the two games’ performances is to be expected somewhat given how much of a phenomenon Pokemon Go was when it released and how universally appreciated Pokemon is. Harry Potter has its own devout fandom as well, but the appeal of catching Pokemon just like Pokemon Trainers have been doing for years was a huge draw. Wizards Unite is essentially just Pokemon Go but with Harry Potter as well, so perhaps some mobile users have had their fill of augmented reality technology after playing Pokemon Go for the past few years.
Those numbers Wizards Unite has put up will only continue to rise now though given that the game is available in many more countries than it was last week. Niantic and Portkey Games have been working on the game since its launch and have already adjusted the game’s Spell Energy system and given players a free Spell Energy pack to keep them out there hunting Foundables, so expect more updates like that to follow.
