Pokémon Go fever is now global, but the frenzy over the game will eventually fizzle out a bit. That’s inevitable. That’s why it’s a bad sign that Nintendo has announced that a new wearable device that goes with the game has been delayed by two months.
While Pokémon began as a game for Nintendo’s Game Boy, the characters themselves belong to a separate company, which in turn licenses them to mobile game developer Niantic. Nintendo is one of three main investors in the Pokémon Company.
When Nintendo reminded investors of this and that the company would not be raking in all of the profits from the popular mobile game, its stock price fell after reaching an impressive high.
However, Nintendo is the maker of this $35 wearable, which has already sold out its pre-orders. Today, it announced that the wearable would be delayed until September, when it was supposed to be released before the end of July.
The Pokémon Go Plus, if you aren’t familiar, is a wearable device that users can put on their wrists, or clip to their clothing. They can even carry it around in a pocket if they want to be discreet about being adults who are playing an augmented-reality phone game in public, not that we would know anything about that.
It communicates with a user’s phone with Bluetooth, alerting users to nearby creatures and in-game landmarks (Pokéstops) as they walk around, and getting rid of the obvious hazard of walking around with one’s phone out all the time.
Will users’ phone batteries survive another two months? Will Pokémon Go keep up its unprecedented popularity? Nintendo probably hopes so.
Pokémon Go Plus [Official Site] (via The Verge)
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist