The firm told the Financial Times it would bring the augmented reality game to China after striking a partnership deal with a local company NetEase.

Chinese regulations covering online content demand that foreign firms find a partner to launch digital ventures in the country.

Niantic gave no specific date for when Pokemon Go would be turned on in China.

Competition time

John Hanke, chief executive of the US firm, told the FT that it “absolutely” intended to take its games to China – the worlds largest mobile market.

The 2016 launch of Pokemon Go and its massive popularity had left the company cash rich, he said, and in a good position to expand.

Also, he added, a recent funding round had raised $200m (£148m) from investors that would also fuel expansion.

The Pokemon game involves players using their smartphones to find and catch the game’s titular monsters in the real world. They then use the captive creatures to battle other players. Augmented reality (AR) technology inserts the monsters when people view the world through their phone’s camera.

Player numbers had dwindled sharply since Pokemon’s launch, said Mr Hanke, but there was a “solid” core of players who had stuck with the game.

The technical and policy expertise Niantic had amassed while launching Pokemon Go would serve it well as it developed more games, he said.

The next big game it plans to launch will be based around the hugely popular Harry Potter series of stories. That game had the potential to appeal to a very wide range of people, he said.

The game is due to be released in the second half of 2018.

Niantic could face increased competition in 2018 from Google, Apple, Facebook and Snap all of whom have released AR toolkits for developers. Additionally, in China online retail giant Alibaba has announced plans to use AR to help commercial partners.

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Source: BBC

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Disappointed fans will also be offered $100 in the form of the app’s in-game currency, Pokecoins.

The event on Saturday had been touted as a chance for fans to come together and catch some of the rarest monsters on the hugely successful app.

But fans booed and chanted “fix our game!” and “we can’t play!” as executives from Niantic, the game’s creator, attempted to explain the problems.

At one point a bottle was thrown at a presenter on stage – it missed.

Pokemon Go was launched last summer and has since been downloaded over 750 million times, reportedly making more than $1bn in revenue. The game required players to walk around the real world in order to find monsters in different locations.

On Saturday, in Chicago’s Grant Park, fans had hoped to find some species of Pokemon that were otherwise not available or extremely rare.

Tickets to the event sold out within around 10 minutes of going on sale, leading to many tickets being resold at almost 10 times their face value.

‘Worst time’

But the festival succumbed to a combination of overwhelmed mobile networks, and several bugs that Niantic admitted were “on our side”.

“We know that this is not the day that we had all envisioned,” Mike Quigley, the firm’s chief marketing officer, told angry attendees.

“But we appreciate your patience.”

As well as the technical problems, long lines prevented many ticket holders from getting into the event for more than three hours.

“This is the worst time I have ever had doing anything,” tweeted one fan, who later left.

In an attempt to fix the issues, the company increased the radius of the event by a further two miles, meaning players could leave Grant Park in order to try and connect to the game and get access to the rare creatures.

And just before 6pm local time, attendees were told they would all get a Lugia – a Pokemon that had not been available on the game before, an announcement that drew big cheers from an otherwise dejected crowd.

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Source: BBC

The post Refunds as Pokemon fest beset by glitches appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The court in the Ural mountains city of Yekaterinburg is yet to sentence Ruslan Sokolovsky, 22.

The blogger filmed himself playing the game in 2016 in the local Orthodox church built in remembrance of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

He was arrested shortly afterwards.

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Source: BBC

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