Pokemon Go launches in France and Hong Kong as Nintendo stock plummets

With a backdrop of Nintendo losing half of its PokÃ©mon Go-induced stock gains, and a France and Hong Kong launch, the game's developer has also revealed expansion plans for the game.

Over the weekend, the extremely popular augmented reality game PokÃ©mon Go launched in France and Hong Kong. The launches, highlighted by the official Twitter account for the game, brings the number of countries that the game can be officially played into 38. However, even in countries the game has not launched in, the game can still be played, as the database of locations is fully populated.

Niantic's CEO John Hanke revealed during a San Diego ComicCon panel about the game on the same day of the France launch that a staple of the PokÃ©mon franchise, player trading, would be added in a forthcoming update. Also coming soon to the tile are changes to how the in-game feature PokeStops work, as well as an increase to the number of collectible PokÃ©mon in the game. Hanke had no timeline for any addition to the games, saying that some of the new features the developer is looking at adding were months or years away.

Nintendo's revelation that PokÃ©mon Go would not appreciably affect earnings had a profound negative impact on the company's stock price on Monday. In one day, Nintendo lost 18 percent of its overall value as the Friday press release saying financial impact of the title would be "limited" drove investors away from the company.

At close of business in Japan, the stock had lost about half of its gains since launch.

Nintendo, Google spin-off Niantic, Google, and The PokÃ©mon Company are the four companies involved in bringing the immensely successful PokÃ©mon Go to market. Nintendo owns 32 percent of the PokÃ©mon Company that maintains the PokÃ©mon intellectual property trademarks, and Google itself handles the mapping data.

Apple could see an extra $3 billion in the next 12 to 24 months from in-app purchase revenue from PokÃ©mon Go, according to analysts. Ninendo's Friday announcement claimed that the financial impact of the title's success would be felt more by The PokÃ©mon Company and developer Niantic.

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6 Comments

9secondkox2 3120 comments · 8 Years

About 8 years ago

Should have partnered with Apple to handle mapping data

uroshnor 99 comments · 13 Years

9secondkox2 said:

Should have partnered with Apple to handle mapping data

Perhaps , but Pokemon Go's data set is close to being identical to what Niantec used for their previous game, Ingress, and Niantec was deeply Googly, until Google ejected them from the company family in the Alphabet restructure.

Apple Maps is not yet cross platform (that will likely change once they make it available to web sites), and Android is very important to Niantec (at least psychologically).

it would be great to see Pokemon Go, or a game like it, adopt Apple Watch interactive notifications (instead of selling its own wristband to do essentially the same thing, as well as a bunch of other Apple features, as they deal with parts of the Pokozombie / distracted walking /driving issue really well (eg linking distance tracking to Apple's activity tracking mechanism would be way more accurate and safer than what Pokemon go does)

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

Definitely this game should have been Apple exclusive. Apple would have handled the zombie danger so well.

mcfrazieriv 71 comments · 10 Years

i floss to clear things like this out of my mouth.

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

Nintendo was pretty shortsighted to simply license their property to Niantec. They should've taken on more of the risk. The problem with them is they make good software, but their hardware ideas are crap.