The Craze Around Pokémon Go
By: D Wise One
Tags: Niantic Lab, Games, Pokémon Go, Nintendo, Chip Monks Stories

Pokémon Go, the game that has introduced millions of people globally, to Augmented Reality!

Pokémon Go came and took over the world by a storm. It’s been about a month since that happened, and while the craze for the game is finally settling in, let us to look back at what the game did the last month.

The Buzz And What’s It All About

The game started topping charts less than a day after its launch. It wasn’t even launched globally and was initially available only in the US, Australia, and New Zealand and then subsequently reached UK and the Asian markets.

The game, brought out by Nintendo and Niantic Lab, in association with The Pokémon Company, is an augmented reality-powered app that brings to the millennial population their favorite cartoon characters from their childhood, the Pokémon.

The game is centered on the premise of fictional creatures called “Pokémon”, which humans known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train to battle with each other for sport.

The game recently expanded to 26 European countries and reportedly has over a billion users in the under one month of its existence and the number of active users for the US alone range upwards of 15 million.

Why The Craze?

There are two apparent reasons for the craze behind Pokémon Go.

The first is the fact that the Pokémon franchise is not something new; it has been built upon over the last 20 years, starting with Game Boy console back in 1996 and has expanded to trading card games, anime series, films, books, toys and other products over the years.

The second reason is the technical expertise. The game is powered by Niantic (which was first formed as a Google internal start-up in 2010), which has been known for its popular Ingress title that has been on the market for about four years.

Released in 2012, Ingress is an augmented reality massively multiplayer online location-based game that features game mechanics and mapping algorithms that form the basis of Pokémon Go. Developed and improved over the past four years, they are the actual juice behind Pokémon Go, making it extremely technically sound and user-friendly.

Combine these two with very high level of capable smartphone ownership in developed markets, widespread 3G, 4G coverage and the prevalent use of social networks, and you have the makings of Pokémon Go.

The Money Pokémon Go Has Been Raking In, And For Whom?

A game like this brings more than just users with it; it also brings loads of money for the company running it. Nintendo, the company running Pokémon Go, has almost doubled in value in the last month, now valuing somewhere in the ballpark of USD 42.5 billion.

As noted by the tech review website The Verge, “such has been the appetite for Nintendo stock, in fact, that on Friday [3 weeks ago] it broke the single-day trading record in Tokyo this century, with USD 4.5 billion of stock changing hands”.

What’s more is that Nintendo might not be the only one benefitting from the craze that Pokémon Go has been. There has been an argument that Apple, which has a 30% cut of in-app purchases, could be making about USD 3 billion over 1–2 years, from just Pokémon Go! This would be a considerable amount; given that Apple’s total App Store revenue last year was USD 20 billion.

The in-app purchases for the game were reaching as high as USD 150 about two weeks ago.

Has It Become A Public Nuisance?

The game has also been at times been a public nuisance, causing major accidents at worst, and minor distractions at best. In New York, a 28-year-old man crashed into a tree playing the game, in San Diego, two others fell 50 feet off a cliff.

On the other end of the ocean, in the UK, four teenagers had to be rescued from a mine after getting lost in the complex for more than five hours. In cousin Northern Ireland, Police reportedly had to explicitly tell players, ‘But there’s a Zubat in there’ is NOT an excuse for breaking into someone’s house’.

A driver in Baltimore reportedly crashed into a police car because he was too distracted by Pokémon; similar instances of accidents were heard from all over the world, including a major highway crash that involved more than ten cars. Players in Bosnia have to be kept from roaming into minefields, and Police across the world received complaints of stolen Pokémon that cause quite a nuisance for the authorities to deal with.

Cellular Data Concerns For The Users?

One of the major concerns over the game has been the cellular data usage. While people believe since the game requires one to keep moving from one place to another (and playing it on Wi-Fi is, obviously, impossible) you will be playing it on cellular data, and loads of it at that.

Thus it is said that the game is a huge sucker for cellular data.

U.S. House of Representatives raised one such concern in a letter to Niantic CEO, John Hanke, about two weeks ago. The letter outlined and put into perspective the concerns that the House committee on energy and commerce has concerning the cellular data usage of the app.

Four major questions were raised in the letter:

Are there best practices that Niantic follows to minimize the amount of data consumers use when playing Pokémon Go? Has Niantic worked with wireless carriers to ensure that consumers are not unexpectedly hit with large overage charges? Does Niantic conspicuously warn customers before they start using the app about how much data the app consumes? Does Niantic have any mechanisms in place to make sure consumers are made whole in the event they are hit with unexpected verge charges resulting from the use of your app?”

CEO Hanke has not yet given an official reply to these questions, but there are many who disagree with the extent of the data usage. Of the people who disagree is the American cellular services company T-mobile, that announced it was giving customers a free year of unlimited data of Pokémon Go usage.

The Final Word- Catch Em’ All!

While so far your view of Pokemon Go might have wavered from positive to negative, there are obviously both sides to the AR game. The country that Pokémon Go has bustling this week is Singapore.

In other news: The game has caused positive healthcare results, with researchers at University of Leicester, UK, specializing in international diabetes research, stating that it might be a means of tackling type 2 diabetes and a Canadian company making devices that make Pokémon Go accessible to wheelchair users.

On the other hand, experts around the world have also issued warnings that the game might be a cause for insomnia and related problems.

Regardless of the critics, the players are having a ball. The final word thus remains: catch em’ all!