Nintendo teams up with Pokemon Go creator for smartphone games

TOKYO - Japanese games giant Nintendo is teaming up with the US firm behind runaway hit Pokemon Go to develop augmented reality smartphone games, the two companies said Tuesday.

Their first joint venture will involve Nintendo's lovable half-vegetable, half-animal Pikmin characters in a game expected to launch sometime this year.

Augmented reality (AR) technology allows images and animations to be superimposed on the real-world view seen on a smartphone's rear camera.

It was key to the success of Niantic's Pokemon Go, which thrilled users around the world with the appearance of Pokemon characters in their neighborhoods across the globe.

"Niantic's AR technology has made it possible for us to experience the world as if Pikmin are secretly living all around us," Nintendo representative director Shigeru Miyamoto said in a press release.

Miyamoto, creator of Pikmin and other famed Nintendo characters including Super Mario and Donkey Kong, said the new app would be designed around "making walking fun."

Nintendo had in the past been reluctant to let its characters venture outside traditional consoles and into the increasingly popular world of smartphone gaming.

But in recent years, it has released a string of mobile titles, including 2016's "Super Mario Run" and 2019's "Mario Kart Tour."

"The deal could help address complaints among investors that Nintendo hasn't been able to earn much from smartphone apps," Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, told Bloomberg News.

"As we continue to expand our games portfolio, it was a natural next step to team up with Nintendo," Niantic CEO John Hanke said in a joint press release.

"We're looking forward to shaping the future of AR together," he added, without offering details on which other Nintendo characters might be in line for AR games.

Pokemon Go has been hugely successful since its 2016 launch, earning more than a billion dollars in the first 10 months of 2020 alone, according to tracker Sensor Tower.

Agence France-Presse

GOTTA CATCH ‘EM SERVERS | Pokemon Go Australia log-in complaints grow

Growing numbers of Pokemon Go players in Australia, one of three countries where Nintendo Co’s smash-hit mobile game is available, are complaining they’re having trouble logging in, raising concerns the Japanese firm may not be able to roll the game out globally as quickly as planned.

Shares in Nintendo fell nearly 6 percent in Tokyo early on Wednesday after a three-day surge on the successful U.S. launch of the augmented reality game last week added 1.2 trillion yen ($11 billion) to the company’s market value. Based on the 1990s Japanese franchise, the augmented reality game topped Apple Inc’s free app charts.

By 0220 GMT on Wednesday, a total of about 1,300 Pokemon Go users had reported problems accessing the game in Australia over the last two days, according to website aussieoutages.com, which tracks digital service disruptions.

The game has only been released in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and Nintendo has said launches for other countries including Japan – one of the world’s biggest gaming markets – are due soon.

Both Nintendo and Niantic, which developed the game in tandem with Pokemon Co, declined to comment. Nintendo owns a third of Pokemon Co and has an undisclosed stake in Niantic.

Some gamers in Australia have speculated servers were overloaded because players in the United Kingdom, where the game is not yet available domestically, were trying to log on.

“When Pokemon Go servers experience issues, so do I,” a user with the handle @_emilymcc wrote in a post on the aussieoutages.com website.

The reported disruption adds to a flurry of headaches Nintendo is facing with Pokemon Go.

Security researchers raised concerns about the vulnerability of users’ data after finding that Pokemon Go players signing into the game via a Google account on an Apple operating system device unwittingly gave “full access permission” to Google accounts.

Meanwhile cases of armed robberies and injuries involving Pokemon Go players have also been reported.

source: interaksyon.com