Pokemon go live map outage android#

It has a significantly smaller player base, even in when you compare the first bloom of launch, widespread press, and “try it out” adoption. For one, it didn’t have the power of a decades-long, beloved intellectual property behind it. Ingress, however, is a fundamentally and radically different game than Pokémon Go. Over five million user suggested portals were placed. One player might suggest a portal location and have it rejected, while another player would suggest the same place and get it approved months later. Niantic was flooded with over 15 million suggestions, and the review and approval process was lengthy, opaque, and prone to inconsistency. In addition, Ingress players were invited to submit portal suggestions. This included not only obvious choices such as the Washington Monument, but also locations which were frequently geo-tagged in photos-in short, user generated data, where the original creator had no idea their geo-tagging would be used to site a real world game stop. The portal maps were rooted, at first, on popular locations. It’s this portal map that has seeded much of the Pokémon Go world-those portal locations have formed the basis for the Pokéstops and Pokégyms. Without delving into the backstory, much of the action in Ingress revolves around portals-interacting with them to gain items, deploying items to claim or improve them for your chosen faction, defending them against the other faction.

Pokemon go live map outage android#

Its rollout was also staggered, launching on the Android platform first, on December 14, 2013, and then for iOS on July 14, 2014. Ingress, while it has millions of app downloads (upwards of seven million), has a relatively small core player base (current estimates range from 350,000-750,000 active, regular users). The Pokémon Go map is built in large part upon the Ingress map 2. Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, spun off from Google with investment from Nintendo, the Pokémon Company, and Google, after their successful launch of an earlier AR game called Ingress-and that’s where a number of the issues lie. Pokéstops and Pokégyms are “anchored” on the map to actual places, such as statues, fountains, signs, gardens, or specific locations in or near buildings such as churches.

Players traverse the real world, catching Pokémon, visiting Pokéstops to gather supplies, and battling at Pokégyms. But we’re also witnessing the problems inherent in building a massive AR based upon decisions made long ago, rooted in data collected in part from users, and disconnected from the realities of a changing world.Īs a quick overview, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game 1 played via a smartphone or cell-enabled tablet. Now, as Pokémon Go ignites countless Facebook wars, propels Nintendo’s market value by upwards of $7.5B USD, and sees parks and public spaces overrun with children and adults-individually and in groups-running around gathering Pokémon and snagging treats at Pokéstops, we’re seeing the potential for fun, community building, and social engagement on a grand scale. But until the launch of Pokémon Go, the promise and pitfalls of AR hadn’t been laid bare on a grand scale.

It’s a concept that’s come to life in myriad ways. It’s a phrase that’s been bandied about for over a decade.