5 ms·

Look at this chart: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GLc5ve5_djc/V-ysZgW6uDI/AAAAAAAADIY/-tVg2iC0qQcWBwjc0vBVBxVcJ9Yhbij6gCLcB/s1600/niantic-1.png https://4.bp.blogs

Look at this chart: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GLc5ve5_djc/V-ysZgW6uDI/AAAAAAAADIY/-tVg2iC0qQcWBwjc0vBVBxVcJ9Yhbij6gCLcB/s1600/niantic-1.png https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GLc5ve5_djc/V-ysZgW6uDI/AAAAAAAAD... The worst case scenario was 5x, which was a factor of 10 off. If you are that far off when you do your capacity planning, you can be pretty sure you've got problems throughout your entire stack.

roninb 10y ago
There is literally no way anyone could have expected it to do this well. Nintendo has steered clear of mobile gaming because they expected all of their IP to flop in the mobile world. That said, what you said is still true. If you're thinking you're going to have 100k users, you might be willing to allow a lot more data to be transmitted and/or processed than if you had 10m users. Just looking at tracker alone, having to transmit and measure distance between a dozen points and ordering them is a lot more work than checking whether a dozen coordinates are within a range and listing them in any order.
- jandrese 10y ago
  > Nintendo has steered clear of mobile gaming because they expected all of their IP to flop in the mobile world. I don't believe this for a second. Nintendo knows where its goldmines are. IMHO it is far more likely that they steered clear of mobile because they didn't want to cannibalize their Game Boy sales. It's a classic case of a big corporation being slow to react to change or even trying to stop it because they hold a dominant position in the old system. Nintendo would much prefer if "mobile gaming" still meant Game Boys but the world has already made their decision and they can't stop it. They can't ignore the sales figures on what would have otherwise been an obscure goofy spinoff fitness app on the Game Boy. They've ignored the mobile market for too long and now there is pent up demand. Without Pokemon Go I doubt you would have seen the sudden scramble to develop and release a Mario game for iPhone.
  - roninb 10y ago
    That's a fair opinion and maybe it's true, but it comes from the horse's mouth that they were afraid Mario and Pikachu wouldn't do well on a phone.
  - merb 10y ago
    well Pokemon Go compared to the good old Pokemon Silver/Gold is just crap and that was a Gameboy Color Game.
  - kaishiro 10y ago
    >> Nintendo would much prefer if "mobile gaming" still meant Game Boys but the world has already made their decision and they can't stop it. I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. The Nintendo 3DS (I assume what you mean by "game boy"), has been a very successful product for Nintendo. And sales of the 3DS have actually spiked as a result of Pokemon GO.
    - CannisterFlux 10y ago
      While it may be a success, the 3DS has sold half of what its predecessor the DS did (~60 million vs ~130 million units worldwide). The NX will probably sell half again of the 3DS. The market for handheld gaming systems is dead or at least terminally ill. And I say this as someone who plays on a New 3DS daily (don't get into Monster Hunter if you want a life). The reason Nintendo has avoided mobile gaming is probably down to fear of piracy. The DS was ruined (from Nintendo's POV) by flash carts, and with the changes they made on the next generation the barrier to entry for copying games is now lower on Android/iOS than on the 3DS. I think that when they do finally go mobile, the games will have a lot of server-side checks going on. The games will be a pain in the neck to play even if you are paying. For example, always-on internet required will only work on non-rooted devices, that sort of thing.
      - kaishiro 10y ago
        For sure - we're on the same page, although I'm a little more bullish on the future of some sort of hardware gaming platform, like the upcoming NX. I'll be the first to admit that could be wishful thinking, but I just can't go over the thought that my phone isn't a serious gaming device. Monster Hunter is actually a perfect example. When we get the crew together we'll rock for 5 or 6 hours, swapping out chargers. I can't see myself ever doing that comfortably holding a piece of glass.
mtrpcic 10y ago
That chart is not at all accurate. If it were, it would be telling us that over time, they expected no change in data volume? They set a single number as "Expected volume", and a single number as "worst case", with no planning for growth at all? That's what this chart is showing. Either they were so poor at planning that this chart is accurate and the fault is on them, or the chart is inaccurate and we can't really trust any of the data it represents.
- itcmcgrath 10y ago
  I can guarantee you the chart is accurate as I created it. Yes they did expect change, but the only number that matters for this graph is "how big can we get" and then "if we get that big by the end, is there enough capacity". The answer to to the first one turned out to history making ; no-one in their right mind would bet on happening beforehand, and the second turned out to be "Yes".
  - biot 10y ago
    If one interprets the graph as "derivative of transaction growth" instead of "number of transactions" then it makes perfect sense. The derivative of linear growth is a horizontal line, whereas quadratic (edited, thanks acomar) growth would be a line that has slope.
    - acomar 10y ago
      Quadratic, not exponential. d/dx(e^x) is e^x. That's actually why e is called the natural log.
  - devilsavocado 10y ago
    Do you know how those estimates are made? As someone who only passively follows some Pokemon news it was obvious that Pokemon Go would be absolutely huge on launch. It was all over facebook, youtube, reddit etc since the day it was announced. I don't think I've ever seen so much hype for a game, including major AAA titles. It seem strange to hear that no-one in their right mind would think it would happen.
MBCook 10y ago
That shows their estimates were terrible. The article says (in one of the only bits of real information) that they blasted past their estimates with only Australia and NZ just 15m after launch. Whoever came up with those numbers must have had some serious methodology flaws. I know they couldn't predict that it would become the biggest online game ever for a while, but the initial demand prediction was clearly way off even before it started growing like a rocket.
- bduerst 10y ago
  >That shows their estimates were terrible. Pokemon Go became the most-downloaded app in history within the first few days. Are you saying that's the bar that people should estimate at launch?
  - kmm 10y ago
    It shows that they were over their worst estimate total volume in one day. Were they really expecting less than a few million user-days in total?
    - bduerst 10y ago
      From the article, it seems like a few million users/day is a typical expectation, but record-breaking isn't. >Throughout my career as an engineer, I’ve had a hand in numerous product launches that grew to millions of users. User adoption typically happens gradually over several months, with new features and architectural changes scheduled over relatively long periods of time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- petters 10y ago
  No, it shows that successes like these are impossible to predict.
- jandrese 10y ago
  It's hard to estimate with no data. Nintendo had never released any other mobile games and the few NES/SNES ports had modest sales (at admittedly high price points for mobile). When it comes down to it, the game is closer to a fitness app than a Pokemon game and can be described as bare bones. The fancy accessory wasn't even available at launch. Many of the players are people who have not bought a Pokemon game in over a decade, or ever in some cases. If there is one area I can solidly criticize Niantic for it is rushing the other region releases so quickly. It's clear the servers were already badly overloaded and they just started adding countries left and right. I know it sucks for people who live in those countries to have to sit out while the rest of the world is having fun, but it's really not much more fun to sit at the eternal loading screen because the backend is entirely on fire.

roninb 10y ago

There is literally no way anyone could have expected it to do this well. Nintendo has steered clear of mobile gaming because they expected all of their IP to flop in the mobile world. That said, what you said is still true. If you're thinking you're going to have 100k users, you might be willing to allow a lot more data to be transmitted and/or processed than if you had 10m users. Just looking at tracker alone, having to transmit and measure distance between a dozen points and ordering them is a lot more work than checking whether a dozen coordinates are within a range and listing them in any order.

jandrese 10y ago
> Nintendo has steered clear of mobile gaming because they expected all of their IP to flop in the mobile world. I don't believe this for a second. Nintendo knows where its goldmines are. IMHO it is far more likely that they steered clear of mobile because they didn't want to cannibalize their Game Boy sales. It's a classic case of a big corporation being slow to react to change or even trying to stop it because they hold a dominant position in the old system. Nintendo would much prefer if "mobile gaming" still meant Game Boys but the world has already made their decision and they can't stop it. They can't ignore the sales figures on what would have otherwise been an obscure goofy spinoff fitness app on the Game Boy. They've ignored the mobile market for too long and now there is pent up demand. Without Pokemon Go I doubt you would have seen the sudden scramble to develop and release a Mario game for iPhone.
- roninb 10y ago
  That's a fair opinion and maybe it's true, but it comes from the horse's mouth that they were afraid Mario and Pikachu wouldn't do well on a phone.
- merb 10y ago
  well Pokemon Go compared to the good old Pokemon Silver/Gold is just crap and that was a Gameboy Color Game.
- kaishiro 10y ago
  >> Nintendo would much prefer if "mobile gaming" still meant Game Boys but the world has already made their decision and they can't stop it. I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. The Nintendo 3DS (I assume what you mean by "game boy"), has been a very successful product for Nintendo. And sales of the 3DS have actually spiked as a result of Pokemon GO.
  - CannisterFlux 10y ago
    While it may be a success, the 3DS has sold half of what its predecessor the DS did (~60 million vs ~130 million units worldwide). The NX will probably sell half again of the 3DS. The market for handheld gaming systems is dead or at least terminally ill. And I say this as someone who plays on a New 3DS daily (don't get into Monster Hunter if you want a life). The reason Nintendo has avoided mobile gaming is probably down to fear of piracy. The DS was ruined (from Nintendo's POV) by flash carts, and with the changes they made on the next generation the barrier to entry for copying games is now lower on Android/iOS than on the 3DS. I think that when they do finally go mobile, the games will have a lot of server-side checks going on. The games will be a pain in the neck to play even if you are paying. For example, always-on internet required will only work on non-rooted devices, that sort of thing.
    - kaishiro 10y ago
      For sure - we're on the same page, although I'm a little more bullish on the future of some sort of hardware gaming platform, like the upcoming NX. I'll be the first to admit that could be wishful thinking, but I just can't go over the thought that my phone isn't a serious gaming device. Monster Hunter is actually a perfect example. When we get the crew together we'll rock for 5 or 6 hours, swapping out chargers. I can't see myself ever doing that comfortably holding a piece of glass.

mtrpcic 10y ago

That chart is not at all accurate. If it were, it would be telling us that over time, they expected no change in data volume? They set a single number as "Expected volume", and a single number as "worst case", with no planning for growth at all? That's what this chart is showing. Either they were so poor at planning that this chart is accurate and the fault is on them, or the chart is inaccurate and we can't really trust any of the data it represents.

itcmcgrath 10y ago
I can guarantee you the chart is accurate as I created it. Yes they did expect change, but the only number that matters for this graph is "how big can we get" and then "if we get that big by the end, is there enough capacity". The answer to to the first one turned out to history making ; no-one in their right mind would bet on happening beforehand, and the second turned out to be "Yes".
- biot 10y ago
  If one interprets the graph as "derivative of transaction growth" instead of "number of transactions" then it makes perfect sense. The derivative of linear growth is a horizontal line, whereas quadratic (edited, thanks acomar) growth would be a line that has slope.
  - acomar 10y ago
    Quadratic, not exponential. d/dx(e^x) is e^x. That's actually why e is called the natural log.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  Do you know how those estimates are made? As someone who only passively follows some Pokemon news it was obvious that Pokemon Go would be absolutely huge on launch. It was all over facebook, youtube, reddit etc since the day it was announced. I don't think I've ever seen so much hype for a game, including major AAA titles. It seem strange to hear that no-one in their right mind would think it would happen.

MBCook 10y ago

That shows their estimates were terrible. The article says (in one of the only bits of real information) that they blasted past their estimates with only Australia and NZ just 15m after launch. Whoever came up with those numbers must have had some serious methodology flaws. I know they couldn't predict that it would become the biggest online game ever for a while, but the initial demand prediction was clearly way off even before it started growing like a rocket.

bduerst 10y ago
>That shows their estimates were terrible. Pokemon Go became the most-downloaded app in history within the first few days. Are you saying that's the bar that people should estimate at launch?
- kmm 10y ago
  It shows that they were over their worst estimate total volume in one day. Were they really expecting less than a few million user-days in total?
  - bduerst 10y ago
    From the article, it seems like a few million users/day is a typical expectation, but record-breaking isn't. >Throughout my career as an engineer, I’ve had a hand in numerous product launches that grew to millions of users. User adoption typically happens gradually over several months, with new features and architectural changes scheduled over relatively long periods of time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
petters 10y ago
No, it shows that successes like these are impossible to predict.
jandrese 10y ago
It's hard to estimate with no data. Nintendo had never released any other mobile games and the few NES/SNES ports had modest sales (at admittedly high price points for mobile). When it comes down to it, the game is closer to a fitness app than a Pokemon game and can be described as bare bones. The fancy accessory wasn't even available at launch. Many of the players are people who have not bought a Pokemon game in over a decade, or ever in some cases. If there is one area I can solidly criticize Niantic for it is rushing the other region releases so quickly. It's clear the servers were already badly overloaded and they just started adding countries left and right. I know it sucks for people who live in those countries to have to sit out while the rest of the world is having fun, but it's really not much more fun to sit at the eternal loading screen because the backend is entirely on fire.