I played Pokemon Go for three hours or so this morning, wandering around the streets of Philadelphia, collecting little monsters and forging ahead with Nintendo and Niantic Labs’ bold new direction for the franchise. I had a good time! You can read my review for more info. I did face some bugs in my time with the game, and it seems like Niantic’s servers are struggling to handle the crush of launch day. For a little while now, I’ve been locked out, faced instead with the above image: cheery, but ultimately unhelpful.
The Internet has been full of similar reports, starting with the rollout yesterday. It appears to be scattered: clearly plenty of people are playing, and my experience shows that the game does work, just not all the time. Launch day blues can also be blamed for a lot of the other technical problems I encountered on my first day: I imagine it’s somewhat hectic over at Niantic right now. Hopefully things calm down in the next couple of days and we can all get out in the blazing hot sun to catch Pokemon to our heart’s content. I’ve contacted Niantic for comment, and will update if they have any new information to share.
As people who play online-only games will attest, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Plenty of games struggle to handle the traffic that comes with launch day, and the crowds that come with a big name like Pokemon alongside a global launch are just difficult to manage. Niantic’s previous game was Ingress, a similar real-life GPS based game, but you just can’t beat the sort of traffic that comes with a recognizable brand. It’s a little different, however, when you’re dealing with mobile. Free games only get so long to make their initial impression, and if people are unimpressed they have a way of uninstalling them.
On another note, Pokemon Go just hit #1 on the “top grossing” app chart, so clearly some people are able to log in and play. And pay.
The Internet has been full of similar reports, starting with the rollout yesterday. It appears to be scattered: clearly plenty of people are playing, and my experience shows that the game does work, just not all the time. Launch day blues can also be blamed for a lot of the other technical problems I encountered on my first day: I imagine it’s somewhat hectic over at Niantic right now. Hopefully things calm down in the next couple of days and we can all get out in the blazing hot sun to catch Pokemon to our heart’s content. I’ve contacted Niantic for comment, and will update if they have any new information to share.
As people who play online-only games will attest, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Plenty of games struggle to handle the traffic that comes with launch day, and the crowds that come with a big name like Pokemon alongside a global launch are just difficult to manage. Niantic’s previous game was Ingress, a similar real-life GPS based game, but you just can’t beat the sort of traffic that comes with a recognizable brand. It’s a little different, however, when you’re dealing with mobile. Free games only get so long to make their initial impression, and if people are unimpressed they have a way of uninstalling them.
On another note, Pokemon Go just hit #1 on the “top grossing” app chart, so clearly some people are able to log in and play. And pay.
I played it here in collingdale PA near darby
ReplyDeleteI played it here in collingdale PA near darby
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