First, the good news. McDonalds Japan has confirmed that they are the first brand to officially partner with Niantic’s and Nintendo’s immensely successful augmented reality game, Pokemon GO. The bad news is that contrary to rumors that were going around yesterday, we have yet to see the game officially be available in its “home country” of Japan. There is also still no official word from the developers as to when it will actually happen as the now cultural phenomenon has yet to make its way to Asia.
A lot of people find it really strange that Pokemon GO still hasn’t made its way to Japan or any other Asian country for that matter, since those are major markets for the whole Pokemon franchise. But Niantic has said that they want their servers to be fully ready to handle the expected high volume of users who will try and find virtual monsters and Pokeballs and other weapons in the real world. But what we do know is that McDonalds is confirming that they are indeed in a partnership to turn their 3,000 or so stores in Japan into “gyms” for the Pokemon collectors.
An unnamed source has said that the game was indeed set to have launched today but when the details about the McDonalds collaboration leaked before the official announcement, they decided to postpone the release. That’s because they thought their servers would be overloaded when it actually goes live because of all the pre-launch hype. So now, we still don’t have any indication as to when they will be ready to launch in Japan.
As evidenced by the presence of Pokemon-related news on any website or social media, Niantic and Nintendo should have realized by now how people are eagerly anticipating the game to be live in their respective countries. They should add as much server power as they can or whatever it will take to accommodate all the possible demands on the game, lest people get tired of waiting. But really, we doubt that people will give up anytime soon.
VIA: SlashGear
