“Pokemon GO” has been a huge topic not only in the tech news lately, but as a whole. The game managed to make the headlines over and over again for various reasons, and while interest in it has died down somewhat, it looks like developer Niantic has plenty of plans to keep the title afloat in the future.
A second generation of Pokemon are going to be released into the game next year, although the exact schedule and plans of the studio were not made clear. It does look like they are following a similar system to the original “Pokemon” games though, so this should indeed help them keep the game relevant for a good while.
Meanwhile, some positive reports about the influence of “Pokemon GO” on some people have started to surface, painting the game in a more positive light. A notorious suicide spot in Japan has apparently seen fewer incidents lately, and according to official reports, the game might have something to do with it.
The Tojinbo cliffs are frequently the “final destination” of people who’ve decided to take their own lives, and have been a major problem in the local area for quite a while now. However, “Pokemon GO” seems to have some important areas right around the cliffs, leading many players to the location.
Subsequently, it’s apparently become more difficult to commit suicide discreetly at the place, driving people away who’ve come for this purpose. The question that remains now is if the suicide rates are actually getting lower, or if people are just looking for another place to do what they’ve decided to do.
Other companies have been following the progress of “Pokemon GO” very carefully, and the game has been quite interesting to various software developers due to its success. Calling its premise original would be a huge overstatement, especially in light of “Ingress”, a similar game made by the same developer a few years ago, but what was unique was the way it used the “Pokemon” brand in combination with these mechanics.
Critics claim that there is a lot more potential in this field and we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, so we’re curious to see what will happen a few years from now in this market. Many other studios can potentially release their own versions of “Pokemon GO”, branded with their own franchises.
The only thing stopping other studios from cloning the idea outright at the moment is the huge database of important locations which Niantic already had available and waiting for them when they started working on the game.
They got that database thanks to the efforts of “Ingress” players, so the studio has one major advantage over other companies on the market in this regard. Sooner or later though, someone is going to come up with a way to use publicly available resources to build a similar database, and afterwards it will be a matter of time before we see the market flooded with clones.
That doesn’t have to be a bad thing of course, as long as those clones are implemented in an original and tasteful way. “Pokemon GO” made it clear that this idea can be very profitable if done right, and we expect to see other studios jumping on it as soon as they have the chance. Disney comes to mind as a major example, but there are of course many others.