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Pokemon Go Doubles Nintendo's Stock Price (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report form Reuters: Shares of Japan's Nintendo Co soared another 14 percent on Tuesday, more than doubling the firm's market capitalization to 4.5 trillion yen ($42.5 billion) in just seven sessions since the mobile game Pokemon GO was launched in the United States. The phenomenal success of Pokemon GO -- now available in 35 countries, the majority in Europe, and most recently in Canada -- has triggered massive buying in Nintendo shares, surprising even some seasoned market players. Nintendo shares ended Tuesday up 14.4 percent at 31,770 yen, bringing its gains to more than 100 percent since the launch of the game on July 6. Turnover in Nintendo shares hit 703.6 billion yen, surpassing the record for trading turnover in individual shares it set on Friday, of 476 billion yen. Trading in Nintendo shares roughly accounted for a quarter of the entire trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's main board. The success of Pokemon GO, unforeseen even by its creators, has boosted hopes that Nintendo could capitalize on a line-up of popular characters ranging from Zelda to Super Mario to strengthen its new foray into augmented reality. Pokemon GO is now the biggest mobile game of all time in the United States.
... Bubble Bobble!
Seriously, who plays that game and why?
I still can't figure out why people are so dense when it comes to the potential of augmented reality.
After the US launch there was a constant trickle of news articles about Pokemon GO. Since it was released a week a go that trickle became a huge wave. Every day there are new articles about people playing - mostly positive nostalgic pieces. This publicity is something that money just cannot buy.
Meanwhile the game is so overloaded that my daugher cannot get it to work on her phone. The whole thing is just crazy.
But if I did, I would have bought some damn stock.
Two words: Street Fighter GO!
Can you say Hadouken?
should clean up the streets pretty fast.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
n/t
I don't understand all the vitriol towards this game here. It's fun as heck (and very addictive).
Been offline for at least the past 90 minutes.
Not sure if they're getting DDoS'd again or what.
It's been pretty obvious to me that Nintendo's value is in it's IP, not it's hardware. Games on other systems, movies, tv etc. are where the growth is.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Just wait for them to have an pokemon camp where it's really a place to pump out brainwashed child soldiers.
this is by far the most useless there could be. The only good side is we have an easier way of detecting idiots.
Hopefulls it helps them recover from the low Wii U sales and enables them to provide many more enthralling games in the future.
After the robots take all of our jobs, will this be how we spend our days?
... Nintendo is in danger of dying! /sarcasm
Dark Reflection
Pokémon
For the swarm!
it makes you wonder if Nintendo will cave into the pressure of in-game Ads. They're sitting on a gold mine with millions of eyeballs at their disposal. Let's all keep our fingers crossed Nintendo doesn't give into the dark side.
Who the hell needs child soldiers? Poor countries that don't yet have robots (i.e. not Japan).
If you have it, DUMP IT. If you don't have it, DON'T BUY IT. Once this fad wears out, and/or once the weather changes from summer to WINTER, you think people are going to wander outdoors to play this silly game? Plus, once they have as many on the hook for this fad, you know they will start PUSHING ADS. That will kill it for good. Start playing it, every mile, or certain time frame an ad pops up you have to wait for to finish, before you can continue. It's like a drug dealer setting up in a new neighborhood...start off at a reduced price, get em hooked, then jack up the price.
Cinpokemon
At this point in time children ARE NOT a renewable resource in Japan, unlike in previous generations. Losing any of their current children would both reduce the genepool for future generations (potentially greatly, since I know of a number of Japanese families whose family registries are ending this generation.
Combine that with current living costs in japan, women wanting careers and more sexual freedom, etc, and you've got a huge demand, rather than glut for the supply of the 'next generation'. Child soldiers are for countries which have plenty of children, a low life expectancy, and generally an unstable government (since most child soldiers are used in internal, rather than external, disputes.
https://games.slashdot.org/story/04/04/02/0113231/mogi-location-based-mobile-gaming-hits-japan
I was part of that company. Talk about being too early...data charges for playing were ranging in the hundreds of dollars for the most active players.
http://links.net/share/write/thefeature/Mogi__Second_Generation_Location-Based_Gaming.html
I tried it, and I'm wondering what the hype is about. Not because of the idea, which is nice, but the implementation, which totally sucks. Very regular and very annoying crashes that waste items, severe server problems, burning through the battery as if it was calculating PI to a gazillion digits (this app is the only one to make my phone *hot*!), etc.
For some in-game advances (hatching pokemon-eggs) you have to walk certain distances. Ok, I know my regular morning walk distance, which is 2.4km. I had to restart this app eight times during this course, and it only "got" about 1.5km due to that fact that it does not count while being crashed (crashing is not that obvious, the display still follows your path on then virtual map, but the background process(es) that count distance, provide new pokemons, or allow intercations or item access is/are gone). Or you try to catch a pokemon - you spend a bunch of those "pokeballs" to catch it, and when you got it, the game freezes. The pokeballs are gone, and of course the pokemon is, too, after you restart the app. Well, and restarting (or starting in the first place) is just trying your luck. During the day it is "just" difficult to start, but after work or on weekends, the app does not even complete the loading screen. It usually hangs at the point where it connects to their server(s?) and thats it. As the server capacity problems have not been fixed after a week, I guess the server side simply does not scale (which perfectly matches the apps quality). That I get the game to start during my walk might be due to the fact that I walk while most of the teenagers are still in bed ;-)
Worse of all, people complained about the loss of bought items (e.g. you can buy those pokeballs if you are to impatient to "harvest" them), so I and maybe some other, more cautious people will wait for the software to getting into proper production status before spending a single cent on anything).
The version number of the app tells an developer that this software is basically not ready for production (0.29.2, a clear indicator for it being beta, if not alpha), and as unripe and buggy it is, it is an insult to the user. No reaction to the bug reports (they just generate an auto-answer that they won't reply to bug reports), and nearly 200k users giving that app only one star due to the bugs. And even those who give more stars more often than not complain that the app is buggy. I don't understand those idiots - If an app crashes regularly, why do they give five stars?
All in all, a nice new gaming idea, but with a total failure of an implementation. I have not heard of the development company (Niantic, Inc.) before, but from this experience, I would not let them develop even a "hello, world!" program for me.
The concept of running outside directed by some content provided by a computer may go even further with advances in the Augmented Reality. Imagine for instance riding a real horse while the AR stuff makes you feel like hunting outlaws in the Wild West by creating their avatars and of course playing atmospheric music.
Nintendo and other large cap stocks have been on a massive upswing lately due to capital coming from Europe. While I'll attest that Pokemon Go is fun, claiming it is the reason behind the doubling of Nintendo's stock is farfetch'd. Very little of the "stock market" these days is driven by fundamentals.
http://vimeo.com/166807261 :O
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
They can still do hardware, but I'd suggest addons to other systems rather than a whole console line. Perhaps custom controllers, or if they're going to hook up with more VR games, a decent VR system consoles (although a Nintento AR system would be cool), an addon for smart devices, or a VR "ds"
Remember this episode? Not so futuristic or far fetched now, isn't it? Now we just need a resurgence of Google Glass type wearables.