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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!
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.
...
Have you not gone outside in the past week? Seriously?
Purely anecdotal, but from what I've seen it's people aged 4 to 40+.
And a fuck load of them at that. Also it's good to see groups of kids out and about walking and riding places rather than just loitering around with "nothing to do".
But if I did, I would have bought some damn stock.
Two words: Street Fighter GO!
Can you say Hadouken?
n/t
1. It's summer
2. It's social
3. It's Pokemon
It's a geolocation MMO built with an extremely popular franchise on top of it. The game is based on Ingress, which had something like 7 million players as of last year and even then a lot of people hadn't even hard of Niantic before Pokemon Go. Most of the important locations were generated from Ingress and/or data collected from Ingress players.
I don't think that either Nintendo or Niantic were quite prepared for the rush that is happening right now, I mean they knew it would be big but not quite this big.
And sure, it may be a fad but damn, it's pushing a lot of downloads / new phone purchases
People will look back at this the same way we look back at the hula hoop craze, another frivolous toy that caught on and got people moving... you know, for kids!
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
Hopefulls it helps them recover from the low Wii U sales and enables them to provide many more enthralling games in the future.
... Nintendo is in danger of dying! /sarcasm
Dark Reflection
I don't know. A webforum post bitching about the game might be even more useless...
Yep. It's definitely a good way to detect idiots... by finding all of the posts like yours from people who rage against a simple phone game.
People love to spend their time on all kinds of inane stuff... no reason to get so upset over it.
Oh, I see. Perfectly understandable now, sir... you're a raving asshole who thinks that being out in the open is an invite to get children raped.
I seriously hope someone snips off your balls before you every have children. I'd hate to see you passing this kind of bullshit on to another generation.
Now go fuck yourself, bitch ass fucktard.
For the swarm!
And yet you're here. Posting on /. not contributing anything more than opinions on things that, in the long run, don't matter. Speaking of all the useless things you could do....
Seriously, who plays that game and why?
I went to a nearby closed food store and meet three male kids walking with their phones up talking about where they should go. ... maybe they were just taking a stroll and had to discuss where they should go next and held their phones like all kids do .. or they played the game.
Many people, and none of them owe you an explanation.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hey! Get back to curing cancer.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm playing it. It's stupid, it has no depth, I didn't even grow up with Pokemon (I'm about five years too old), but it's actually quite addictive. Not something I'd ever spend money on though.
I found it to be a nice change of pace to my usual walk.
Walked about 27km today instead of the usual 4.
Sure the new car smell will wear off in about a week and then I probably will only fire it up once or twice per month.
," said tlhIngan, staring like a zombie at their terminal mindlessly typing slashdot comments like a SHEEPLE
Who the hell needs child soldiers? Poor countries that don't yet have robots (i.e. not Japan).
You seem really smart... Please tell us what all your hobbies are so we can be as awesome and smart as you.
When I play Pokemon Go, I am looking around at the world. Because my phone vibrates when a Pokemon is in range, so I don't need to stare at it continuously.
I'm 50+ and I love Pokemon Go. I had lost interest in computer games because I spend all day sitting in front of a computer and don't want to spend my spare time doing that too. I like to get out of the house for fresh air and exercise. But thinking "I have to do two miles today", every day, makes it feel like a chore. Pokemon Go makes it fun.
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).
52 here and very much in agreement. I bet there's plenty older too.
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.