Ignoring the comparison with Twitter for a moment, this shows that Nintendo's mobile strategy has been woefully slow. They've been ignoring a huge market segment to try to shift hardware instead, and this toe in the water shows that a lot of people are interested in playing their games but not necessarily buying their consoles. I'd argue this means their business needs to change dramatically - away from their own hardware and towards leveraging their terrific IP on other platforms. Very much like Sega did a while ago.
Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
121–130 of 342 posts
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#122This Guy Used a Drone to Try to Catch Pokémon
http://gizmodo.com/can-you-speed-up-your-pokemon-go-progress...
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#123Let's wait a month to see what engagement looks like. Most people are downloading simply because everyone is talking about it - especially news media
I was super excited but then pretty fast realized that:
a) its the same as ingress. With all but even more of the annoying bugs. b) It eats even more battery than ingress c) Its purely pay to win. I could have lived with free 2 play and buying some special or cosmetic items. But not selling essential items ...
Currently i mostly wonder why people don't care about that. I hate playing games where other players can just spend $10 and overtake hours worth of skilling.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm only vaguely familiar with ingress, did it have a collecting mechanic like Pokémon? How did you get stronger to take over points on the map?
It definitely didn't have a "catch them all" mechanic, and that alone lets Pokémon Go have much more of a feeling of personal progress. In Ingress, everything is about taking over portals for your team. You get items with weird names that you use for taking over portals. The maximum strength of the items you get is determined by your experience level, up to 8. After level 8 all players are equal. What Ingress has tha…
> that alone lets Pokémon Go have much more of a feeling of personal progress.
In addition to the levelling-up aspect (L1-L16) Ingress has about a dozen "Medals", each with 5-tiers. IMO, they go along way in terms of giving a feeling of personal progress.
> In Ingress, everything is about taking over portals for your team.
There are also infrequent Niantic-organized global 'Anomaly' events, which require a surprising amount of planning and coordination. To me, the reward is not taking a screenshot, but taking part in an activity that scratches that deeply human/primal "my group vs. its enemies" itch in my lizard brain in a safe way. Its like being on any kind of team really. On a meta level, it scares be how easily members of the other team get dehumanized (being called stupid, or having more money than sense, etc for no real reason). It's petty stuff mostly, but the whole in-group/out-group thing freaks me out a little.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#125I am really surprised it has taken this long for such an app to emerge. After smartphones took off and gained GPS, I remember sitting in a friend's student den (ca. 2009) idly brainstorming an AR game that would let you roam the city as an RPG character, occasionally battling or collaborating with other players. We thought it was pretty obvious and we wouldn't be the first to think of it, so we never bothered to actually pursue the idea.
Ingress was the first big game I remember that provided something similar, but it kind of ended there. The Pokemon theme is pretty much perfect for such a setup: inventory, challenges, not too martial and you get to piggyback on an existing story. Our vision was more geared towards the WoW gamer crowd.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#126I've run into people playing this game in the park, at Publix, in Costco and even restaurants. It's a SENSATION, never quite seen something like this. I'm excited for the future for Nintendo - we could be witnessing the birth of a new age of Nintendo supremacy!
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#127Can someone explain how it works? I understand that it's AR- and location-based. How/where/why do you acquire the virtual creatures? Do you have to look for them aimlessly or are there clues?
You walk around until you see a Pokemon near your player, then tap it. Then the game goes into "camera" mode where you can snap a picture of the pokemon placed in the real world, or throw pokeballs at it by swiping your finger properly.
You walk around and your player walks around using the GPS.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#128Ignoring the comparison with Twitter for a moment, this shows that Nintendo's mobile strategy has been woefully slow. They've been ignoring a huge market segment to try to shift hardware instead, and this toe in the water shows that a lot of people are interested in playing their games but not necessarily buying their consoles. I'd argue this means their business needs to change dramatically - away from their own har…
Doesn't that depend on if they can make money on this model? This is a 126-year-old business, not a startup that's starving for "eyeballs" to increase their VC valuation. Selling hardware and $60 games could be a better (and more long-term) business than selling in-app "coins". (Or not!) I guess we'll see now.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#129I'm just waited for the first theft tied to this. Shouldn't take a thief long to get the app and find a seedy area to drop a Lure in. Wait for unsuspecting hapless victim(s) to stand around staring at their phones oblivious to the world for an extended period of time and it would be like shooting fish in a barrel for a ride-by phone snatcher on a bike.
Having lived in Bolivia, I would never even -dream- of playing this in a third world country. People get shot for smartphones/tablets there, no respect for life.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#130Well, doubt how many will remain after 1 month.