There have been a lot of big games on the App Store. That is impressive.Įven more impressive is that for that first week, Pokémon GO was only available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. But, today Apple confirmed to The Loop that Pokémon GO is just as big, and perhaps even bigger, than people thought:Īpple told me today that the game has set a new App Store record with more downloads in its first week than any other app in history. All you need to do is walk around any major city or look at the photos of people mobbing spaces like New York’s Central Park to get a sense for just how big the game is.
It’s not a surprise that Pokémon GO is a huge hit. And there are several major public events in the works, including one in Chicago on July 22 and others in parts of Europe and Japan.
#Pokemon go for mac update#
They launched a significant update to the game just last month, introducing Raid Battles and new Gym features.
#Pokemon go for mac full#
Hanke reiterates that both trading and player-versus-player battles are still in the works, but he gave no timetable for their release.ĭespite Pokémon GO having nowhere near the number of users it once did, Niantic has still had its hands full this summer.
That switched off things like extending gyms, it pushed out things we still want to have, like player-versus-player and trading. But we had to redirect a substantial portion of the engineering team to infrastructure versus new features. We were fortunate to have a massive launch, a massive success, and many, many more users than we had planned for. Really all the way through November and December, from launch onward we were rebuilding and rewiring infrastructure just to keep the game running at the scale that we were running at. We lost probably six months on our schedule because of the success of the game. One of the more interesting points from the interview centers on how the overwhelming success of the game early on altered the team’s plans for growing and expanding the user experience through new features. It will disappear after July 24, so trainers will need to act quickly if they don’t want to miss out.Īlso marking the first year of Pokémon GO’s life, The Verge’s Andrew Webster interviewed Niantic CEO John Hanke. In celebration of that anniversary, the game’s makers at Niantic announced that starting today a special Pikachu wearing Ash’s hat will begin appearing across the world for catching. One year ago Pokémon GO launched and quickly became a phenomenon. The update’s exact release timeline is unclear, but by all indications it’s imminent.
While Pokémon GO’s days as a worldwide phenomenon are over (at least for now), the game continues to receive important updates, and the adoption of ARKit appears to be a key one. One either nice perk of AR+ is that, as a side benefit of being fixed to a precise point in space, Pokémon will display in an accurate scale, so you can walk up and see just how big or small a Pokémon truly is. These additions are a clever way of using ARKit to not only improve the realism of the game’s visuals, but its mechanics too. But if you sneak up carefully, not only will you prevent the Pokémon from fleeing, but you’ll earn some nice perks: an Expert Handler bonus that increases the amount of XP and Stardust you receive, and a better chance at earning Great and Excellent Throw bonuses. The meter fills up as Pokémon grow more aware of your looming presence, and if the meter fills up completely, the Pokémon will run away. Because the game will be able to better measure distance and placement of objects, each Pokémon found in the wild will now have an awareness meter. The Pokémon GO website announced that this update, featuring what the post dubs ‘AR+’, is launching very soon.ĪR+ will not only make Pokémon appear more accurately in space, but it also brings enhancements to actual gameplay. As was previously announced at WWDC, Pokémon GO is adopting Apple’s ARKit framework to provide a more true-to-life AR experience.
The most well-known augmented reality smartphone game will soon be better than ever.
0 kommentar(er)
