Pokemon Go was released on July 6th, 2016
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Pokemon Go was released on July 6th, 2016, and became an almost overnight sensation.&Based on the popular Nintendo game, Pokemon, which has undergone many iterations since its beginning, Pokemon Go captured the imaginations of thousands of players. Pokemon Go is an application for both Android and iOS devices developed by the company Niantic. Niantic first used the program found within the Pokemon Go application on their other game, Ingress, which focuses on traveling to different geographical locations to interact with in-game objects. Pokemon Go takes this same logic to the idea of “catching” P fantastical creatures that battle each other. The player walks around their physical town while carrying their phone. The location services of the phone pinpoint the player in relation to in-game items, such as Gyms, where players battle, and wild Pokemon, which are caught to increase the player’s team.&Shortly after the release of the game, Niantic ran into severe server strain, as they were not prepared for the influx of users who were trying to play the game. While the number of people who played Pokemon Go in the first month after its release continued to increase, many players were unable to access the game due to geographical locks and server issues.&
While the original popularity of Pokemon Go caused a jump in Nintendo’s stock presence, the subsequent issues with the game led to its steady decline. While the original idea of placing game spots in the real world acted as a selling point, the reality of trespassing on private property soon caused issues for the game. Similarly, Niantic had to force an update to their game that caused the system to shut down if the player was traveling too quickly. This was inspired by a series of car accidents that were caused by players using their phones while operating vehicles&Due to server issues that caused the player to “drift” wildly from one area to another, they soon allowed for the game to continue running as long as the user agreed that they were not driving a vehicle, merely riding inside one. Along with the legal issues, the North American servers were too overwhelmed to keep up with the in game mechanic that allowed for the tracking of Pokemon to different locations. In an attempt to decrease the server load, Niantic discontinued this tracking feature. This led to a sharp decline in the number of players on the application itself, as it was near impossible to collect Pokemon intentionally without the tracking system.&
Today, while Pokemon Go is still played by a large number of people, it has fallen from the original swarm of players that it originally hosted. Part of this is due to the novelty of the application wearing off, as well as the changes pushed by the developer. While some speculate that the game itself will increase in popularity again over the summer months, there is no denying that Pokemon Go resulted in an unprecedented crowd of players all working together to hunt down Pokemon in an attempt to truly “Catch ‘Em All.”&
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Pokemon Go finally launches in Japan
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Media captionA look at the first time that Pokemon became a craze in the 1990s.
Nintendo's Pokemon Go has finally launched in Japan, the birthplace of the little virtual monsters.Amid a flurry of social media excitement, Niantic Labs, the software company behind the game,
it was "finally broadcasting" in Japan. First released in the US, Australia and New Zealand on 6 July and now available in more than 30 countries, the game has been a global phenomenon. The Japanese launch comes with a McDonalds sponsorship deal.Fast food restaurants were expected to be advertised as places where people were guaranteed to find Pokemon, or as "gyms" where players can train up their captured monsters for virtual fights.
But a McDonald's spokesman said restaurants would "call on players not to become a bother to customers who are eating".On Friday morning, excited Japanese fans began tweeting that they had been able to start playing.
"The moment I found out the servers were up I jumped right out of bed, got dressed and ran outside with my iPhone and two extra battery packs," Samuel Lucas, an Australian YouTuber based in Japan told the BBC."So far I've been to the Japan post office which was my first poke stop, and now I'm on my way to a big park near my house."Other Pokemon Go users didn't have to look far, with 21-year-old fan Tomoharu Kudo finding a Charmander in his bed.
However, he soon ventured out in search of more Pokemon. "I left my house to seek a new journey that will change my life," said Mr Kudo.
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The Japanese launch is a sponsorship tie-in with McDonalds
After weeks of stories about people in other countries running into trouble playing the game, Japanese authorities have taken precautions and issued a nine-point safety guide, in cartoon form.The warnings, by the National Centre of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity, included asking users to register with "cool names that are different from real names" and cautioning them against heatstroke as they walk around in the sun."I want people to abide by the warning so that people can play it on smartphones safely," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday.
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The post, which has been retweeted more than 15,000 times, called on users to bring spare batteries with their smartphones to prepare for emergency communications and to refrain from using their phones while walking
Just a few hours after the launch, there were already reports of an accident.A student at Osaka's Kindai University reportedly fell down the stairs while playing Pokemon Go and was taking to hospital, said users on social media. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game on smartphones which has millions of people worldwide obsessively capturing small creatures in public spaces. It works by showing you a picture of your real surroundings as caught by the phone's camera, then uses GPS to place virtual little monsters within that picture on your screen. The mix of virtual and real worlds allows players to, for instance, fight a dragon circling Big Ben or chase a spaceship moving down their street.The monsters in it were first popular in the 1990s when they started on the Nintendo Game Boy. Back then, trading cards were a huge hit in school playgrounds and the new game manages to build on that legacy.
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