Making its international debut in July 2016, “Pokémon Go” blends the fictional creatures of the “Pokémon” franchise with Niantic’s augmented reality global positioning system, earlier seen in 2013 release “Ingress.”
Players attempt to find and collect Pokémon creatures, seen on their smartphone displays and layered on top of live images of the real world obtained through the smartphone’s rear camera.
Virtual and physical worlds combine as players congregate in and around public spaces, monuments, and malls to participate in special events and claim in-game locations for one of three teams.
It reached 100 million downloads worldwide in the 25 days following its July 6 North American and Australian debut, though the Chinese government withheld a domestic license for “Pokémon Go” pending further review, citing personal safety, transport issues, and geographical information security issues in a January 2017 report.
Niantic is considered far more likely to gain approval in the world’s largest mobile games market now that it has partnered with established Chinese publisher NetEase.
The San Francisco company, spun off from Google in 2015, continues to develop “Pokémon Go,” and in November 2017 announced “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite” for 2018, which is expected to maintain the core location-based, augmented reality exploration experience of “Pokémon Go.”