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DID
YOUKNOW?
All of this sounds like a lot of exercise,
and it is. And even though gamers are a
stereotypically lazy bunch, it’s not slow-
ing themdown one bit. During the game’s
first weekend of release, social media was
swamped with users complaining about
their sore legs.
It is making Nintendo a fortune
Nintendo has sold more than 277 million
Pokemon games to date, over 21.5 bil-
lion trading cards in ten languages,
and made seventeen feature films
over the past two decades.
Nintendo, however, had hit hard
times lately after the massive failure
of its Wii U console and the lacklustre
response to its Nintendo NX. It’s safe
to say that the company needed a win,
and it got one from an unexpected place
as Pokemon GO launched and took the
world by storm in a matter of days.
One week after the app’s release,
Nintendo’s stock skyrocketed and is up
around 59% since before the app came
out. With the app being downloaded 7.5
million times in the United States alone
and the rest of the world jumping on the
bandwagon, Nintendo looks to be sitting
on a goldmine made of Pokemon.
It might help some criminals
commit crimes
In a very disturbing case, police in St.
Louis County, Missouri, USA, arrested
four men on July 10, 2016, a mere four
days after the game’s release, for using it
to locate people to rob.
Players are able
to place beacons to
alert other players
to landmarks, and
these thieves were
placing them near
Pokestops to attract
their victims.
The Pokemon
Company addressed
this quickly, issuing
a statement urging
players to play in
groups when in
unfamiliar places
and to be alert to
their surroundings.
We can only hope
that this does not
become a trend.
A teenager dis-
covered a body
On July 8, 2016, 19-year-old Shayla
Wiggins was trying to find a water
Pokémon in a location that sounded like
the perfect place for them: near a river in
Riverton, Wyoming, USA. While scanning
the area, Wiggins discovered what turned
out to be a body floating in the water
and called 911. Wiggins later said that
because she quit playing to dial 911, she
never did find the Pokemon she was
looking for.
The
game
is sending
players to
some pretty
strange
locations
The internet has
been floodedwith
claims from play-
ers that the app is
sending them to the
strangest places.
In addition to the
Australian police sta-
tion that issued a state-
ment asking players
(a.k.a. trainers) not to
come inside, there have
been reports of Pokestops
(locations where players can find free
items that enhance gameplay) and gyms
(places where trainers battle and form
alliances) inside graveyards, behind strip
clubs, at London’s MI5 security agency
headquarters, in toilets, and inside places
of worship.
One user discovered that his home
was listed as a gym, and noticed several
people parking outside of his gate.
The game is more popular than
Tinder
In the span of a few days after its launch,
Pokemon GO was downloaded more
times than Tinder on Android devices
and was very close to matching, and
potentially passing, Twitter’s active user
percentage, despite the many-years head
starts that both apps have over the hot
new game. SimilarWeb reports that 60
percent of the people who downloaded
the app in the United States use it daily,
and the average time spent playing is
around 43 minutes, compared to
Instagram’s 25 minutes and
Snapchat’s 23 minutes.
Is this what this
game is doing to us?
Adorable ... the
much sought after
Pikachu