Pokemon Go is sweeping the nation, with wild Pokemon popping up all across West Lancashire.
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The game has been a huge hit with players since it was rolled out in Australia, New Zealand and the United States late last week, with more than 5 million downloads on the Android Google Play app store. It is worth more than $9 billion more now, it is said.
The combination of the game and the real-world element is called augmented reality. “Those plans are probably being put in place right now”. “Rest assured – we’re gonna catch ’em all”, the police force said on Facebook, using the game’s tagline.
But the only way to avoid that, is to simply not play the game. So it’s best to download apps only from official app stores.
The technology comes from Niantic Inc., a company founded by Google and spun off a year ago.
“Playing this game now, you can kind of live out the fantasies that I had as a child to go around and be a Pokemon trainer”. “I can spend time with her, go out and walk around in the park and try and find something interesting”. “This could be the Angry Birds of AR”. Niantic has had years to refine the technology, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau. Despite overly simplistic gameplay, an incredibly glitchy launch, and having an irrational hatred for my ability to have my phone on for longer than a few hours, Pokemon GO has been the only game I’ve played in the past few days, and is likely to remain a contender for my time for the foreseeable future.
“Investors have big expectations that Pokemon Go will open a new chapter in Nintendo’s future growth”, said Takashi Oba, a senior strategist at Okasan Securities in Tokyo.
Launch the game on your device.
Olson, the Piper Jaffray analyst, says imitators are inevitable because “that’s the nature of mobile gaming”.
But despite the huge success of the game, Nintendo’s share surge was overdone as it will have a limited impact on the firm’s bottom line, said Nomura Securities analyst Junko Yamamura. Finally, there’s the fickle nature of gamers.
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“What’s more, given the use of email as an authentication mechanism (think “Forgot password” links) they now have a pretty good chance of gaining access to your accounts on other sites too”, said Reeve. “I give this four months at the top of the charts, then it will fade”.
