Given the timing of the Pokemon Go’s release on a Friday, the game is likely to become a bigger hit and a major social phenomenon over the weekend.
Advertisement
The craze that has been sweeping America has now made its way to Japan as the Pokemon Go app debuted there on Friday.
McDonald’s Japan and Pokemon Company, meanwhile, officially announced a collaboration whereby the fast food chain’s outlets will be key locations – gyms and PokeStops – for Pokemon Go players.
The game’s popularity has triggered massive buying in Nintendo shares adding as much as $20 billion to the company’s market capitalization which is now at nearly $40 billion, even more than Sony. Whatever the case might be, Pokemon Go is finally available in its home territory where it’s finding an eager audience.
The suspense lasted for days, as global media reports about a timeline for the Japan rollout kept changing, and Nintendo, the Pokemon Company, and the game’s US-based developer Niantic all declined to comment. The release comes within days of the start of Japan’s summer school holidays, which usually begin in late July. “There’s no doubt it will be popular in Japan as well”.
Users are being greeted with the following error message: “Failed to get player information from the server”.
“Nintendo servers have already experienced a number of problems concerning traffic, and their attackers are very aware that the group can not afford to have broken or inactive servers”, says David Emm, a researcher at Kaspersky.
“It’s also a great reason to go outside, so I’m really enjoying it”.
Even prior to the release, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday warned players to use the game in a safe manner.
Hanke was ready to found his own independent startup until Google co-founder Larry Page persuaded him he could keep Niantic within the internet’s most powerful company.
The harsh stance regulators have taken towards imported digital services in the first half of this year might not augur well for the approval of a hugely popular USA game like Pokemon Go – especially given the ties to Google (Niantic began as an internal startup at Google before being spun out in 2015).
It helped that Niantic had already built a technological foundation for “Pokemon Go” via an earlier mobile game called “Ingress”.
Advertisement
The Israeli navy, however, makes no secret of its passion for Pokemon Go, publishing a screenshot of its forces capturing a sea-based monster with the caption: “There are some Pokemon only we can catch”. “Pokémon GO is now available to download in Japan!”.
