"Pokemon Go" may be one of the most dramatic rise and fall stories to ever come out video game this year. After much hype and a strong start, the title just fell all the way off after players discovered its lack of depth and developers Niantic Labs banned third-party finder apps. They've been trying to recoup some of their losses by giving away a lot of free extra bonuses to players.
Niantic chief marketing officer Mike Quigley recounts their experiences over the past summer, when "Pokemon Go" recently launched, in an interview with Eurogamer. Of note is his defense of Niantic's decision to block third-party Pokemon finder apps, which helped players find a lot of rare Pokemon in ways that the game's built-in tracker could not.
As previously reported, Niantic saw that the app took a lot of bandwidth on their servers, and it was only necessary to shut them down in order to make "Pokemon Go" playable to everyone. The consequence was that it ended up disenfranchising a lot of players.
Quigley also compares "Pokemon Go" to "World of Warcraft," another massively multiplayer online game, in the way they structure their content releases, reports GameSpot. This isn't actually false, as it makes sense for them to release new content for the game in waves, to mirror the way Nintendo releases new "Pokemon" games for their platforms. Quigley claims that their setup of releasing small content and game balance fixes mirror the subscription MMO's model instead of the typical free-to-play game's model.
There's no official word yet on when Niantic is going to release the heavily-rumored (but expected) second Generation for "Pokemon Go." There's also still no word on when the legenary Generation 1 Pokemon will be appearing in the game. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.
