Anyone here who isn't retarded knows that Pokemon GO is shit from a gameplay perspective.
However, despite the normalfag hype, this could potentially be a business failure as well.
Despite the fears of Holla Forumsacks, this won't be able to make money off of data mining alone. The only data you're going to be able to get from the geolocation related stuff is of some poke-autist running around trying to get more pokemon, balls, etc.
The AR pictures of the environment? Quite frankly, there's too many normalfags and boring NEETs to sift through for the data to be particularly valuable to the NSA. It may get used by law enforcement for niche scenarios like some dumbass playing pokemon go in some ISIS bomb making facilities or for the tracking of some pokeautist school shooter, but nothing more than that. Any serious thought-criminal wouldn't be playing this game anyways, let alone walk around with a smartphone willy nilly.
The AR stuff won't be commercially viable for getting useful pictures of locations because they'll all be centered around publically accessible pokestops for the most part.
While they do have some microtransactions, that's just icing on the cake of autism. There's simply not enough assburgers people to pay for the hordes and hordes of normalfags.
So how will they make money? Enough to cover all the costs associated with the GPS tracking of every active player, maintain records of user info, etc?
By having paid pokestops.
By selling the right to have a pokestops/gyms at say, a Starbucks or a McDonalds. Thus, by attracting people to your shop, they'll be more likely to grab a coffee or a burger after a long day of running around catching pokemon. It's advertising that not only shows off your location to a potentially very large userbase, but also gets them to physically go to where you are.
archive.is
And their update priority confirms this theory.
However, the problem with this business model is that it requires a fuckton of server power to handle ALL the GPS data for every single player. That's a heck of a lot of resources in hardware and bandwidth being chomped up right there. In addition, you'd have to have a INSANELY huge playerbase that is actively involved in the game and doesn't just catch a pokemon once in a while for fun with friends for shits and giggles. Something you play while on a road trip, while waiting for a bus, etc.