Users have been frustrated and very vocal on the social media, there are clear areas where Niantic is pointed pitch forks at.

Yet I am not sure I would call that bad management, in that they kept the game running, core players are still there in decent numbers while casual players seem to be coming back in waves.

They can surely do better and the game is riddled with bugs, but no one is operating at that scale without significant issues, and they managed to not ruin the game while making impacting changes to the whole system for two years now.

I have my frustration with the games, but I genuinely think they made a very decent job.

As an early player of Pokémon Go since the release day, I can say that the whole game was poorly managed (and still is). Even after the initial spike of users, they can't do a major event without messing it up:

- https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16019404/pokemon-go-fest-...

- https://www.destructoid.com/niantic-is-handling-pokemon-go-p...

The people who play Pokémon Go nowadays, they do it for the novelty of being Pokémon, not because it is a good game. Also, Pokémon Go is popular the same way Flappy Bird was popular: it's an effortless game to handle and it's very convenient to play when you already spend a lot of time on the phone.

Niantic managed to turn a multi-billion dollar game into a multi-million dollar one.

And yet, according to some sources, as of May had the most players they've had since launch. [0]

Whatever beef you might have Niantic or the players of Pokemon Go, the numbers suggest that the game still has some stick, beyond novelty.

[0] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-06-27-pokemon-go-pla...

That HAS to be from others countries then. Where I lived, in Montreal, there was HUGE AMOUNT of peoples playing that game all around. I remember there is a tiny park close by my work, it's cute, almost always empty but there is 3 Pokestop there. During the first few months, there was literally 30-40 peoples there constantly. It was always funny to see them all flee somewhere else when there was no longer the "boost" on theses Pokestop. That wasn't including the people I was constantly seeing walking around playing. I now rarely see people even play that game. It still happens but it pretty far from the first few months where it was everywhere.

There is a clear shift on who plays the game the most and how they play.

The first 3~4 months I remember seeing a lot of youngish and very active people, the heavy players being those travelling all day around the city to complete their dex.

Now I end up a lot more with elder people who manage to play during their jobs, do a lot less “grinding” but do it more efficiently and can pop real money here and there when it matters.

I am not surprise by the number of players rising again while there is no huge 30~40 people croud rushing everywhere: we don’t need to rush anymore, and the main events can easily be planned 30~15 min in advance.

If you are interested in huge crowds, public parks during community days might be the remaining attraction.

Their operational skills are poor. E.g.: there's a bug in Pokemon Go right now which causes name resets, and there's no way to revert to your old name. E.g.: the new Ingress client is more than a year overdue, and they are facing several hard deadlines related to App/Play Store update requirements.

They have, on the other hand, figured out how to run a live game with Pokemon Go, which is encouraging.

However, I don't think they have the necessary skills to operate as a platform for other game/app makers.

I can't speak to the management as I've never played, but Pokemon Go is still one the highest revenue mobile apps in the world (behind Fortnite, but ahead of say Clash of Clans).

If Pokemon Go was mismanagement or failure (though you didn't say it), I don't know what a success is. No one, including Niantic, could have predicted how massively popular it would be in such a short time, so they had scaling problems among others things. Its still the most popular and profitable mobile games out there.

Pokémon is the highest-grossing franchise of all time, even more than Star Wars or any of the Marvel/DC characters: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_highest-grossing_m...

It was obvious that the popularity was going explode.