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| John Hanke at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, 2016/09/13 |
A few days ago John Hanke announced that his team is
going to bring their game Pokémon Go on other mobile platforms, which are
interesting in terms of both gameplay and mobility.
Let’s remember that Pokémon Go earned numerous records
during July 2016. It became the most downloaded app during the first week and
was the first to reach 50 million Google Play downloads, it also was the
fastest to ear 500 million dollars in revenue.
Hanke said that their mission as a company was to
evangelize the concept of playing games outside, real world games. Apple Watch
was said to be a great vehicle for that, especially complimenting the new Apple
smartwatch handware, which includes a standalone GPS and waterproofing, among
other things.
But he also pointed out that if other devices come on
the market with high level of mobility and interesting for gameplay, they would
be also looking for supporting them.
Hanke confirmed that Pokémon Go is likely to come to
Android Wear.
Pokémon Go has become too much popular to be limited
to only one wearable platform and it was expectable to hear that the company
would work on an Android Wear app in future or with other devices.
The latest results of September show that its paying
population dropped 79 percent, even though it is the most profitable mobile
game ever. Still, the question remains whether Pokémon Go will eventually
become a fad, but Hanke is not worried about any downturn.
The next focus of the game will be put on events which
will feature the release of new Pokémon and the battles between players.
No indication of when these upcoming
features would occur was announced. According to Hakne’s words now the
minimum viable product is out in the market, it’s really just the “tip of
an iceberg” in terms of where the team wants to take the game.
The only thing we can do right now is to expect to see
many new and interesting things in Pokémon Go in future.
