'Pokémon Go' to Feature Retailer-Sponsored Locations

And this is why I want no part of the GO nonsense. I would've paid a significant app cost, $5 - 10, for a full-featured game that wasn't going to log my every step and stop and auction it off to the highest bidder.

Well that is the point of the app with the augmented reality and gps feature. You need the tracking to find the locations and poke stops/gyms. Of course data will be collected. If you want a Pokemon game that you don't have to walk around just get one of the many flavors of Pokemon for portable consoles. I certainly hope Nintendo can see the money that can be made on Mobile Devices and release some oldies.

Nothing says America like a Japanese company creating a Skinner box and selling off slices to corporate America to take advantage of naive, impulse depraved kids.

It is just a mobile game jeez man. It gets people outside and allows old to relive the nostalgia and new people to enjoy in an old cultural phenomena. From when I walk around my city it is not just "depraved kids". Plenty of adults enjoying and partaking in the fun you don't understand.
 
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This will have more impact in rural areas with fewer pokestops. In the city, walking by and grabbing a pokeball from 20 yards away won't make someone suddenly need a Big Mac.
 
I must be getting old, but this "phenom" is totally stupid. I saw a woman walk into a light post today on the way to work playing this. Friggin idiots. Lol. Seriously. And the whole sponsored locals only makes me more repulsed by this game. I guess the good news is that it'll definitely help thin out the herd. Cause people are definitely gonna die playing this game.
 
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Lol some of us might be ok with that :p still better than "Twilight rumors" or "Android rumors" or "political rumors" or anything related to or along those lines lol. Certainly could be worse content here ( and actually has been )

Interesting monetization technique. I'm actually ok with this, as long as all the parks, landmarks, etc are still included. Adding a Starbucks pokestop won't hurt things. I'd only be afraid of 1) too many pokestops, which could damage their semi-elusive nature and 2) Stores will almost definitely keep attaching lures to their pokestop to keep people there. Not inherently bad, but it removes the necessity to stay active in the game

Agreeed to an extent but not seeing how "too many PokeStops stops" could be a thing or hurt that much most especially in rural, suburban, or country areas or places that despite their significance just didn't get enough ingress or other input to Niantic to have anymore than 0-3 stops and 0-3 gyms



On point 2 I'd imagine Store's and businesses won't be doing lures 24/7 or every day even 24/7 stores they'll likely do it when they've got the most staff and foot traffic and certainly doubt they'd do so when closed


Keeping folks there with lures might be a bit of stretch business needs a revolving door of customers not just someone making walk through or standing visits just for stuff and making little to no purchases.


Also I'd imagine some businesses that have/use security wouldn't be ok with the same people hanging around for hours or days doing nothing but playing go and charging their phones lol.



I think many here are overthinking this

If this means more Pokéstops in rural and suburban locations, I welcome this.

Ditto ( and yes I hate to say that since internet memes are convinced Ditto doesn't exist in GO lol )

Ingress monetizes this way - kinda. You get in game items that are "very rare" that are brand name to a company. Didn't ruin that game, imo. I just hope they put the $ into making the game a bit more stable.

Exactly if they use the $$$ wisely and do things right it's possible for there to be a little win/win for ALL


I see these companies putting themselves at an interesting crossroads right now ( which right about now Nintendo could use ) and I foresee just as many good outcomes as bad from this game/trend/etc

Who gets the sponsors' money - Apple or Nintendo?

Or will there be a big fight over percentages?

Debatable as to if Apple should get any at all Howe in theory Apple is already getting their $$$ not only a fraction of in app purchases but likely given the amount of devs from both companies and multiple countries on this ID imagine Apple is getting at least 2 to 7 times the standard yearly dev account fees
 
It seems this concept was driven as a marketing platform first and game second. It's rather ironic that a game is needed for people to venture outside their homes and "socialize"... on their mobile devices.

Yeah, glad you put the "socialize" in quotation marks....um...cause I saw a woman walk into a light post playing this game on the way to work today. Hello lampost pleased to meet u! Lol
 
I must be getting old, but this "phenom" is totally stupid. I saw a woman walk into a light post today on the way to work playing this. Friggin idiots. Lol. Seriously. And the whole sponsored locals only makes me more repulsed by this game. I guess the good news is that it'll definitely help thin out the herd. Cause people are definitely gonna die playing this game.

Darwinism
 
... I want no part of the GO nonsense. I would've paid a significant app cost, $5 - 10, for a full-featured game ... .
You are aware that this is a feature in PS and X-Box games now for a long time. I am talking about the ads. Right now that is what they are, but they might be using the trove already.
 
The more screenshots I see the more I'm noticing the time at the top and the battery life, especially in successive screen shots from one article/person... and how fast it drains the battery ;)

Don't forget your battery case! :eek:
 
The more screenshots I see the more I'm noticing the time at the top and the battery life, especially in successive screen shots from one article/person... and how fast it drains the battery ;)

Don't forget your battery case! :eek:

Lol funny enough three big stores have run out of stock of powerbanks in my city. Also it is draining so much that my samsung drains faster than it can charge. It does charge on my iPhone however.
 
That's the entire reason for this game. It's basically an advertisement disguised as a kid's game. Lots of money to be made.
 
My only request is to re-skin the app to something like Star Wars or Star Trek. Pokemon looks like baby software.
Play Ingress. Really. If you want something more techy/scifi (it has a complete scifi storyline, but you don't have to believe in it in order to play), you will absolutely love Ingress. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's an ongoing game of capturing and holding territory played between two factions, the Enlightened (green), and the Resistance (blue), using the entire world (literally) as our playing field. It uses all the same in-game/real-world location data as Pokémon (indeed, the Pokémon locations are only a subset of the Ingress locations, and all those locations were collected and submitted by Ingress players - you're welcome, new Pokémon players), but it's a much more strategic/competitive game. You'll do all the same walking, you'll be working with the same real-world map (with a darker, glowy, matrixy scifi theme), you'll be capturing and holding Portals (not Gyms), but you'll be linking those Portals together into ever larger series' of triangles (called fields), covering more and more territory (all while the opposing team is trying to knock them down and make them their color, all in real time). I have seen fields covering multiple states, fields linking countries - epic things pulled off by squads of players working in coordination over large areas - they make fields that could be seen from space. At the other end of the spectrum, I have also done a ton of walking the local neighborhoods by myself, usually at night, hacking, smashing, linking, and fielding (Ingress will show you your local neighborhoods like nothing else). In between, I've been involved in epic realtime battles with groups of other players, sneak attacks at midnight, all sorts of fun. The first week I played Ingress, I "accidentally" ended up walking 45 miles. I've spent about $10 on the (totally optional not-required non-intrusive) IAPs they added to Ingress last year, but in the years before that my only expenses were buying new shoes and an external battery (both Ingress and Pokémon Go eat batteries, by nature of running all the phone's hardware and radios full tilt continuously - Anker batteries highly recommended).

And in many areas, Ingress is quite social - the game, by design, makes higher level players work together to accomplish things, and local organizations have developed, in most cities, for each faction - I've made a bunch of good friends amongst fellow Enlightened players. And I've met some pretty nice smurfs - uh, Resistance players too (we call them smurfs, they call us frogs - it's friendly rivalry).

Most of the world is seeing Pokémon Go as a new groundbreaking thing, but, really, Pokémon Go is cashing in on the ground already broken by Ingress. (And, frankly, I'm really happy for Niantic for their success - they've earned it.)

(To your last sentence - don't worry about losing your masculinity or maturity or any such thing by playing Pokémon Go - after all, it was James T. Kirk who said, "The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play." Give Pokémon Go a whirl - the worst that can happen is you may feel a bit foolish. But it's fun. Either way, definitely check out Ingress.)
 
Not sure how it is out in suburbia or in the countryside, but here in the city there anything but elusive. I always have at least five or six of them visible on the map, no matter where I happen to be.

Definitely very spread out in my neighborhood. There are 3 in my neighborhood and the are all nearly a mile apart from each other. I've driven around a bit and from my experience I'm usually able to find approximately one on each corner.
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Who gets the sponsors' money - Apple or Nintendo?

Or will there be a big fight over percentages?

Neither. Niantic and The Pokemon Company. Apple never gets revenue from in app ads (unless iAds, but I feel like that's pretty dead) and this is even one additional step separated from that.
 
Just noticed it's a freemium/pay-to-win app with in-game currency, so I guess that's not enough monetisation. The creditors must be laughing all the way to the bank if they can heard people around to various businesses also.

It's great if there's an app that excites and gives people happiness in addition to getting them out and about. I just personally don't understand the attraction of games where you never truly win and can be beaten by players who pay to rank up or, as with MMORPGs, time heard and grind to rank up so that new players are weak regardless of any sort of skill (if the game even has skilful elements).

That to me causes dissatisfaction and unhappiness rather than the reverse. Call me old fashioned but I much prefer a game of backgammon or cards in a cafe.
 
Definitely very spread out in my neighborhood. There are 3 in my neighborhood and the are all nearly a mile apart from each other. I've driven around a bit and from my experience I'm usually able to find approximately one on each corner.
Wow. The in-game view from my couch includes 27 PokéStops and 3 Gyms (with several more Gyms and dozens more PokéStops just beyond "visual" range). And 3 of the PokéStops are sporting lure modules right now. The joys of living in a somewhat urban area.
 
This pokemon thing.... it's more of a millennial thing, right?

I dont know anyone - besides millennials - that like this thing.... perhaps because of all the cartoons, video games and merchandising they were bombarded with, as the first generation to be born in a computers' world...

In any case.... addicting games and devices... it's kind of lame, I guess.

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EDIT... btw, MACRUMORS... if one opens this thread on safari, coming from the front page, it makes Safari crash... I think it might be related to one of the images in the story.
 
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