Harry Potter: Wizards Unite launched yesterday for iOS and Android in the U.S. and UK, and Niantic‘s new game conjured about 400,000 installs and $300,000 in revenue, according to data from market analyst Sensor Tower.
That’s a strong start, but the firm says this is well behind the explosive debut of Niantic’s 2016 smash hit Pokémon Go. In its first 24 hours in just the U.S., Sensor Tower said the location-based augmented reality game earned 7.5 million installs and $2 million in revenue.
Wizards Unite came out a day earlier in the U.S. and U.K. than advertised, so its possible that many Potter fans didn’t know that the game was available yesterday. Maybe the idea of capturing magic creatures from the Potter world just isn’t as enticing as collecting Pokémon. While Potter started as a series of books and then expanded into films, Pokémon began as a gaming franchise. Pokémon’s fans will inherently have a stronger interest in a new game based on the franchise. Also, while the ultimate goal of Harry Potter was to stop the evil wizard Voldemort, Pokémon is literally about capturing creatures.
Still, considering the massive success of Pokémon Go and the overall popularity of the Harry Potter franchise, you’d be forgiven for expecting huge things for Niantic’s Pokémon Go followup.
“It’s tracking behind Pokémon Go here so far, particularly in terms of revenue, but it was also slower to No. 1 for downloads by more than 12 hours,” Sensor Tower analyst Randy Nelson told GamesBeat. “There are multiple factors at play here, primarily the larger cross-generational popularity of Pokémon compared to the Harry Potter IP and that, when it launched, most consumers hadn’t seen anything like Pokémon Go yet. We also can’t discount the fact that Niantic has an extremely large player base that would be interested in this type of game, but who are already highly engaged with Pokémon Go and simply might not have given Wizards Unite a try yet.”
Wizards Unite is also lagging behind the last mobile Potter game, Hogwarts Mystery, which released in 2018. Sensor Tower told GamesBeat. In its first 24 hours in the U.S. and UK, the free-to-play role-playing game earned about 1 million downloads and $660,000 in revenue.
Since its July 2016 release, Pokémon Go has earned $2.6 billion in revenue.
