Yes, it did. The classic problem for geographically-based mobile games is critical mass. Ingress barely reaches the necessary threshold. Pokemon IP was critical here.
Indeed. I loved Ingress, and I felt more comfortable with that world. But it was nerdy by design. Pokémon, on the other hand, is something everyone has at least heard about - and it doesn't give off that "nerd" vibe. Hence immediate mainstream adoption.
It's active enough, but if you watch trends even one or two additional players in a big city is enough to make a significant difference in the overall team battles.
Similarly, I used to live in San Francisco and my team recently hit 54 winning septicycles in a row -- that's over a year of weekly victories. While we're good players, we're not that good. It's problematic if one team can establish that degree of dominance in one of the most tech-oriented cities in the world.
(Brooklyn had a similar streak the other way.)
And since Ingress never monetized in the top couple of hundred apps, there's no way it is/was profitable.
Been playing for about a year and a half... It seems to me that team balance has always been affected in multiple almost independent ways. Obviously if a new player knows a current player, that will bias their team selection significantly. The part that concerns me is the completely new player, who just found out about the game and decided to give it a try, is asked to choose sides permanently with no indications which side might be better or worse in any way. My choice of Resistance was mostly because I like blue better... glad I chose how I did but I had no idea when I started.
