Starting from July 6th, the world is not talking about anything else: the smartphone game Pokémon Go caught (‘em all) users and news sites attention, and it overtook – in a wave of nostalgia – the usage statistics of popular smartphone apps such as Tinder and Twitter, it became the app where users spent the most time and – of course – it quickly reached number one in download in USA Google Play and App Store.
Pokémon Go is a smartphone game that lets you catch Pokémon while walking in the real world through your smartphone camera and augmented reality. It was only released in USA and some other countries until now, and release in Italy was postponed because of overloaded download servers. This did not prevent Italian users to download anyway the app, through APK, an unofficial Android app store.
Nintendo’s move – which invested in Niantic, the game developer specialized in augmented reality for smartphones – leveraged upon the magic memory of current thirty-something, who played Pokémon between 1999 and the first years of the 00’s decade with Game Boy. This could really be a smart move, considering the gigantic success Pokémon Go is having in these first days after its release. The result: Pokémon Go added $9 Billion to Nintendo’s market capitalization.
Lots of implications are there for firms: just think about local activities such as restaurants, café shops, barber shops and – above all – gyms (that’s where you train your Pokémon!), where users are forced to go to catch their Pokémons. Not to talk about gamers: everyone in these days seems to experience childhood again!
Let’s see 5 things we thought were not possible before Pokémon Go’s release.
#1 – Central Park invaded by Pokémon Go players
In Central Park, New York, the most famous place is the zoo, the same where the Madagascar animals took off from. The problem is: last weekend the Central Park zoo became a Pokémon zoo, because you could see people going around with their smartphones to catch virtual little animals. What best place could there be to catch Squirtle rather than the Big Apple’s green lung?
This tweet, that went viral, perfectly pictures the situation, defined “just insane”.
#2 – Shops won’t let you go in if you won’t consume something first
While playing, gamers have to follow a roadmap (Pokémon Go is integrated with Google Maps) to look for Pokémons in specific locations. These can be houses, bars, train stations or gyms. A bar receiving too many interactions with Pokémon seekers well decided to stick this sign up:
#3 – Prefer Pokémon to love dates
As SimilarWeb (reported by The Next Web) data state, during last weekend the number of Android users with Pokémon Go installed in their device overtook the number of Android users who have Tinder (and very much: Tinder is used by the 2.3% of Android Users, while Pokémon Go by more than 5%). It then looks like Pokémon Go users are reaching Twitter. That’s not very good news for single people!
#4 – Pokémon songs revival
Demonstrating that Pokémon Go is actually a social phenomenon, and not just only a gaming one, Forbes reports that on Spotify Pokémon songs listenings increased by 362% from earlier week: that’s the case of the Pokémon theme song “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”.
#5 – People are looking more and more for power banks!
Playing with Pokémon Go with your own smartphone has a high battery consumption: you need to keep your Localization services and camera always activated, even to get notifications while you’re walking around town. That is why you should expect drastic drops in a short amount of time of your battery charge. This is true especially if you consider that in just one week Pokémon Go demostrated to be the app where users spent the most time in, overtaking Facebook and Instagram.
Official battery consumption statistics were not handed out by Niantic, but a fair idea comes from Patrick Allan of Lifehacker, who wrote that his iPhone 6S Plus, whose battery usually lasts for almost three days, after playing to Pokémon Go it went from 80% to 8% in just two hours.
What are solutions, then? Many gaming and tech blogs are giving battery-saving hacks, but everyone says that the optimal solution is to buy a power bank. If that may not be enough persuading for you, here’s social proof: on Google Trends you can easily see that users are searching more and more for the term “power bank”, which had a peak last week.
So, what are you waiting for? Stock up with power banks to keep your smartphone charged! Pokémon Go is about to be released in Italy and, after all this talk, you just have to at least try.
Quindi, cosa aspettate? Rifornitevi di power bank per mantenere il vostro smartphone sempre carico, perché Pokémon Go sta per arrivare in Italia, e dopo tutto questo parlare, sicuramente bisogna almeno provare!
