Well, who would have thought that we humans were such a bunch of kids! Barely a week after it’s release, Pokemon Go continues to smash all records, everywhere. The maiden week’s reports are out and the app was downloaded more times in its first seven days than any other app in the history of the iTunes App Store. The gotta catch them all! fever appears to have set in already.

Yup. Although Apple declined to give an an official tally on the exact number of downloads, it did confirm that Pokemon Go now holds the title of being downloaded the most times in its debuting week. It took the game barely 4 days to receive the crown of the No. 1 free app in the US App Store, since it was released on July 6th.

While Apple refused to share much in the way of numbers, App analytics company Sensor Tower was quite free with them. The company earlier this week said that the game had been downloaded over 30 million times on iOS and Android and has earned its creators over $35 million in revenue. What’s more, with the Pokemon fever currently at its peak, the app is used more frequently used than some of planet Earth’s most popular applications, including Facebook.

Meanwhile, according to data from Needham, Pokemon Go could prove to be one of Apple’s most valuable virtual commodities. The financial firm believes that the game may fetch the company over $3 billion in revenues from sale of in-game items — two thirds of which occur on the iOS platform, which incidentally, also houses around 80 percent of its players. Phew, that’s just $2 billion short of what Verizon is reportedly paying for Yahoo and most of its core assets.

This is really a first in a lot of ways. While there are other popular apps as well, never before has a game attracted this sort of cult following in its first week. The fact that the cult of the Pokemon has always existed and Pokemon Go is simply providing fans with one of their most realistic experiences yet, may have a hand to play in the game’s immense, unprecedented popularity. There are still many of us who remember our childhood days very fondly. For instance, I still remember when I was allowed to watch television for just 1 hour everyday. Guess what i did with that precious one hour? Gotta catch them all!

Meanwhile, corporations are literally raking in money for every Bulbasaur and MagicKarp caught out in the wilds. While Nintendo, the franchise’s maker, has already realized billions of dollars in stock gains — which actually doubled for a brief period! — McDonalds, which entered into a promotional partnership with the game before its Japan release, also saw a 20 percent jump in its stocks. Who would have believed that pokemon could actually boost a burger company’s business?

Meanwhile. the crusade is expected to continue. The game has officially been launched into only 26 countries yet and we can probably expect Nintendo, Apple and Google — along with other partners, promoters etc. — to do more business as the game makes its stately progress to the rest of the countries across the world — including those in Asia, where pokemon is huge.

It will definitely be interesting to see what strategies the game makers come up with to make sure that the level of excitement does not drop down with time. After all, it is not easy to get folks from all age groups to walk miles and miles happily in search of Pidgies and Pikachus.

Pokemon Go has succeeded so far — and attracted a lot of praise as being beneficial for physical, mental and social health. Another first! — in doing the impossible. Let’s see if it manages to keep setting these benchmarks and bringing the love of Pokemon (and for some, our happy childhood) back to us in the future as well.