Pokemon Go, Go Nintendo!

I love Nintendo. You could call me a fanboy and I wouldn’t deny it. For that very reason I pay close attention to any big news involving Nintendo. I was particularly concerned like many others when they announced Pokemon Go and showed it off at Electronic Entertainment Expo(E3). The game came under extreme scrutiny at the time.

Pokemon Go is a smart phone app designed for gaming on the move. Pokemon.com has this to say about Pokemon Go, “ Travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pokémon with Pokémon GO for iPhone and Android devices.”

Now personally I don’t have a smart phone(yeah I know) so I did not put much interest in Pokemon Go but when I saw the initial response to the app I was worried the strange sense of direction Nintendo sometimes has was going to strike again. I may have just been caught up in the stand-out voices that speak louder than the crowd but upon looking back at it I was a bit disappointed. Damn I’m glad I was wrong. I put the game on the back burner until very recently.

The next thing I remember hearing about Pokemon Go was that the first day the servers went down. Now my original though was that this couldn’t be worse but I decided to take a deeper look. To my surprise the servers hadn’t gone down because of some unfortunate event but because the servers were so overloaded from the masses trying to download and play the game! This wasn’t the collapse of the game or franchise but completely the opposite. The game was greeted with shining reviews and extreme popularity. I’m really happy about this as I may never experience the game myself but I like to hear when others enjoy a game from Nintendo.

This game ended up so far being a huge success for Nintendo. Now lets start by pointing out that Pokemon Go has only launched in the North America region thus far. That said, so far the game has increased the value of Nintendo stock by more than 25%; nearly a 7.5 billion USD increase in a single day.! That’s almost unheard of. The app itself almost matching as much daily access per user as Twitter.

Now what I’d like to discuss hits a more similar note to my previous post. Some people are complaining that the app is so distracting that people are inadvertently heading into danger. To be honest I have to agree to a point. People are going to do what they always have done; be ignorant of others while on their phone. Now I don’t agree that this app itself is to blame, I believe the culture itself is to blame. We’ve had stories so far that players of Pokemon Go have walked into traffic and even wandered so far as to discover a dead body. While these are startling things to learn but they are the minority. To me this app is effective way for Nintendo to get its gamers, young and old, out and moving. People are actively going out of their way to walk around to find the specific pokemon they want, or to walk miles at a time just to hatch a pokemon egg. This app represents a new way for users to experience their games and the new direction of Nintendo; a direction where users actively play their games. While there are inherent issues with the way some users will utilize your app I for one am applauding you Nintendo for how you have again moved gaming forward in a way no other company could.