Slashdot Mirror
Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com)
Who would have thought that Nintendo will ever make a strong return to the market... especially with an app that is not designed for company's signature hardware. But that is exactly what has happened. Shares in Nintendo soared again on Monday, according to a report on Reuters, bringing market-value gains to $7.5 billion in just two days as investors cheered the runaway success of Pokemon Go, the company's first long-awaited title in mobile gaming. From the report: The game, which marries a classic 20-year old franchise with augmented reality, allows players to walk around real-life neighbourhoods while seeking virtual Pokemon game characters on their smartphone screens - a scavenger hunt that has earned enthusiastic early reviews. In the United States, by July 8 -- two days after its release -- it was installed on more than 5 percent of Android devices in the country, according to web analytics firm SimilarWeb. It is now on more Android phones than dating app Tinder and its rate of daily active users was neck and neck with social network Twitter, the analytics firm said. The game is also being played an average of 43 minutes a day, more time spent than on WhatsApp or Instagram, it added. Update: 07/11 11:03 GMT by M :A report on Quartz states that Pokemon Go has added nearly 11 billion USD to the value of Nintendo since its release.
Seems more likely to be a fad, especially when things like this happen. How many people are going to get mugged trying to catch 'em all?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
(Other than anyone who has been paying attention to Nintendo and has seen them do it repeatedly.)
fricken really? Letting your kid play outside in your local neighborhood is now considered a safety issue?
I played the game this weekend with my 18 year old son. It was actually pretty fun. The app needs a good bit of work, but assuming they keep developing and don't mess it up, I can easily see the added market valuation.
It made a kid who usually sits inside at his computer most of the time walk a total of ~8 miles this weekend (not an exaggeration - he's hooked). As my son put it, "Michelle Obama has been trying to convince kids to go outside for 8 years. Nintendo did it in 24 hours."
We used to have that same issue in my time. It was called "a ball". And either the parents sorted it out with their kids or Darwin did it for them.
There is even a movie that used it as inspiration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's that company that sells prescrambled hanafuda cards for the yakuza, because they can't trust anyone to scramble the cards due all the ninja methods of scrambling em in a way that favors a side.
I can't wait for Pokemon GO to lead to the demise of any and all location based games. Niantic's other game, Ingress, was the basis for all the locations in Pokemon GO. I've seen an influx of people at the locations of portals. Mind you, there's usually an abundance of portals inside of cemeteries. I, along with others in the area I play, normally don't visit those portals often out of respect. With Pokemon GO and a younger (immature) group more apt to play, they will probably not have that same respect. It's an unfortunate thing that will probably lead to more problems for people playing Ingress. I'm sure it will also bring negative community attention if/when there's destruction of property.
On the flipside, it's brought many new players to Ingress.
It is now on more Android phones than dating app Tinder
That's only because my wife wouldn't like it if I installed Tinder, but Pokemon are OK.
Ladies, do you find it strange that your husband is going out at odd hours to "catch pokemon" ?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
An extremely addictive AR/VR game... Makes people ignore their normal day to day... Some kind of mind control...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not Nintendo. Niantic did it. As they've been doing for four years with Ingress.
Sounds like their second game is a bigger hit than Ingress was. Hope they get a big cut of the profits.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
but it's unlikely unless he lives in a historic building.
I just read about a poor sop that lives a few towns over who has a gaggle of people constantly in front of his used-to-be-a-church home.
Curating the map data properly sounds to me like a pretty impossible task, and given the appalling lack of rigor these things are done with these days, I'd say we are in for quite an interesting news cycle.
Someone had to do it.
Pokemon uses Ingress portals as Pokestops n such. So, Ingress paved the way for Pokemon, and the ONLY reason Pokemon is popular is because of the Pokemon name. Good for them.
AND there are already HUGE problems for Pokemon with both Servers being overloaded, and hacked APKs that spoofers are going to use to ruin the game. At least with Ingress, you know who the spoofers are, not that Niantic does anything about them.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
maybe you can sue the game maker for not connecting to the sex offender database
If it happens, I'm sure someone will. This is the land of lawsuits, after all.
Someone had to do it.
So, Ingress paved the way for Pokemon, and the ONLY reason Pokemon is popular is because of the Pokemon name. Good for them.
AND there are already HUGE problems for Pokemon with both Servers being overloaded, and hacked APKs that spoofers...
I get it, you're upset because you like Ingress and why didn't all these people get excited about your alien hacking game instead of Pokemon? I like Ingress, too, but there was never any chance it was going to take off like this.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
You know the old mantra of the sex offender, gotta catch 'em all!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Um, but WoW has been going for over 10 years, and still have a higher number of players than any other MMO out there. Most MMO's still wish they were even a fraction of successful as WoW.
This is the first big name AR game, and I am guessing that it will get better, and be copied, just like WoW was.
Nintendo had NOTHING to do with this, it was created by Niantic. Nintendo still doesn't want to release games outside of its own crappy consoles.
Pokemon Go only exists because of Niantic's previous game, Ingress, which has been out for 3 years now. Everything in Pokemon Go from the location of all pokestops and gyms to the way the game functions and tracks you as you move throughout the world and your travel speed was done in Ingress 3 years prior.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
> the ONLY reason Pokemon is popular is because of the Pokemon name
Wrong.
Pokemon is popular because Pokemon are cool and fun. Ingress is interesting, but Pokemon is great. It's also much more approachable, and the game has user settable goals (collect all of my favorite pokemon, etc), whereas Ingress is much more about raw power.
I played Ingress and didn't like it. I love Pokemon Go, however.
Music? Pokemon Go has pokemon music, which fucking rocks. Ingress is some mood setting noises, but nothing like Pokemon.
Graphics? Over a hundred pokemon, able to be rendered into your backyard. You have a somewhat customizable avatar too. Ingress has a tricorder.
Brand name, lol.
Filthy casuals!
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
3 years and their game went nowhere. Nitendo slaps their name and IP on it and it is one everyones phones in 2 days. Tell me again that Nintendo had nothing to do with it.
Pokemon uses Ingress portals as Pokestops n such. So, Ingress paved the way for Pokemon, and the ONLY reason Pokemon is popular is because of the Pokemon name. Good for them.
That does gloss over the fact that Pokemon itself is a hugely successful game franchise in it'd own right with regular new releases that continue to be popular and introduce new gameplay, that has been flirting with this concept for a long time.
Original pokemon was the game that justified owning a link cable (so you could trade and battle with your friends), later generations introduced the pedometer tracking your steps so walking in the real world hatched your eggs, and the internet based trade and battle systems. An AR game where you take your pokedex (smartphone) and travel the world (your home town) looking for pokemon and challenging gyms, is the obvious direction to take Pokemon.
Frankly I'd be surprised if there aren't any design documents for Ingress that had a find/replace done on them to remove the "pokemon" references, as pokemon go is the obvious application of the technology. Like so obvious I'd bet pretty much anyone between the age of 8 and 35 has at some point thought "hey you know what'd be cool..." and described the basic premis of Pokemon Go.
If Ingress hadn't existed Pokemon go would still have hapened (likly delayed due to needing ot invent the tech instead of copying it), there'd juts be fewer artifacts from the Ingress design and we'd probably have a more familiar battle/capture/level system in Pokemon Go, and the map data would have come from Google instead of Niantec.
But that's the world we live in,
No it's not. The world hasn't changed. Just a select group of people think it has.
and that's why I'm surprised a company would open itself up to potential legal liability.
What liability could a game company have if a parent doesn't supervise a child and it gets hurt? It didn't force someone to walk into traffic any more than sending a text message to someone who's about to cross the road does.
Saying I am "upset" isn't quite right. I find it "amusing" that something that is so "new" isn't really all that "new".
They should have used different places for their Pokestops, which are based on Ingress (and backstory) Portals. Create your own backstory, and own locations. Oh wait, that would be ... re-inventing the wheel! (not that new, after all)
And yes, Pokemon is going to be all the rage, until all the idiots come out and get themselves hurt and killed. It happens in Ingress, but the PokeKids are pretty damn stupid about slamming on their brakes in front of the nearest pokestop doing whatever they do there.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This game is pretty good and much more fun than Ingress. It also has serious incentive to buy stuff in-game, like the incubator. To hatch an egg you have to walk 5K and with only one free incubator, I'm inclined to buy a couple - they're only $1.50 each. Niantic, the company behind the game is a spin out from Google, who in turn were a spin out of the Google Earth team, who were acquired by Google way back when. The Ingress SiFi game has been running for years and you can still spot the mid-20's to 30's crowd every so often in a park trying to take down or protect a portal. That said, Ingress's business model was based on putting portals at places like Jamba Juice to try and attract customers to go there. As far as I know, it didn't really work out. Pokemon GO's approach seems much more likely to pay off.
Right now, the biggest problem is that the servers keep crapping out. We'll have to change the phrase "Slashdotted" to "PK'd" or "Go'ed" or something because they are hammered. If you don't think this is a big thing, go to a park and look for teens hanging out looking at phones. Then tell them you haven't reached level 5 yet and they'll nod knowingly.