Pokémon Go hits 650 million downloads

Pokémon Go has been downloaded more than 650 million times, developer Niantic Labs announced today during Google Developer Day at the 2017 Game Developers Conference.

That figure suggests the Pokémon Go craze has subsided somewhat, as you may have expected. Niantic said back in early September — less than two months after the game’s debut — that it had racked up more than 500 million downloads. So if the number of downloads has increased by 150 million in the period following that announcement, which is just under six months long, the pace has slowed a lot since those heady days.

Speaking at Google Developer Day today, Niantic chief technology officer Phil Keslin said the company plans to keep Pokémon Go fresh with regular content updates. Earlier this month, Niantic added second-generation Pokemon to the game for the first time, with an update featuring 80 new pocket monsters to catch.

Pokémon Go players are still producing some staggering totals when it comes to the walking that’s necessary to play the game. Keslin said that trainers have now walked approximately 8.7 billion kilometers (5.4 billion miles) while playing Pokémon Go. While Keslin described that distance as “just shy of Pluto,” the heavenly body formerly known as our solar system’s ninth planet is actually closer than that — even at its farthest distance from Earth, Pluto is about 7.5 billion kilometers (4.67 billion miles) away.

Today also happens to be Pokémon Day, and it’s the 21st anniversary of the franchise.