{"id":98646,"date":"2016-07-14T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=98646"},"modified":"2016-07-14T13:04:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T11:04:35","slug":"this-is-why-pokemon-go-hasnt-officially-launched-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/nintendo\/98646-this-is-why-pokemon-go-hasnt-officially-launched-in-south-africa","title":{"rendered":"This is why Pokemon Go hasn\u2019t officially launched in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pok\u00e9mon Go launched in Australia and New Zealand on 5 July<\/strong>, and became an overnight sensation with its US launch the following day.<\/p>\n

It shot to first place in Apple\u2019s list of top-earning apps in the US in less than a day, and has overtaken apps like Twitter in terms of daily active users on Android.<\/p>\n

The game is developed by Google spin-off Niantic, with Nintendo and The Pok\u00e9mon Company, and its popularity put severe strain on Niantic\u2019s servers.<\/p>\n

This resulted in the company \u201cpausing\u201d its international roll-out.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Business Insider, Niantic CEO John Hanke said<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0they had to slow down their global roll-out to upgrade their server capacity.<\/p>\n

Once they were comfortable, they would resume launching in new countries.<\/p>\n

Why not simply boost their server capacity by several multiples and roll out everywhere?<\/p>\n

\"Pokemon<\/a><\/p>\n

Hype vs.\u00a0server capacity\u00a0vs. player attrition<\/h3>\n

As SurveyMonkey noted<\/a><\/strong>, other mobile games that build huge initial hype saw their user numbers suddenly plummet after a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Regardless of platform, newly-launched online games rarely sustain their initial user numbers as the novelty wears off.<\/p>\n

Niantic may therefore not wish to invest in server capacity that could\u00a0become redundant soon.<\/p>\n

To ensure the game remains sustainable, it is typically better to gauge uptake and player retention, give subscriber numbers a chance to stabilise, and then roll out further.<\/p>\n

That said, Pok\u00e9mon Go\u2019s growth has shown no signs of slowing down, with SurveyMonkey suggesting that it is on a trajectory to beat SnapChat and Google Maps<\/a><\/strong> in terms of daily active users.<\/p>\n

In the past few days, Niantic has resumed its international launch of Pok\u00e9mon Go, first in Germany, and then in the UK, suggesting that it is now \u201ccomfortable\u201d with it server capacity again.<\/p>\n

Provided its servers holds out, there is no reason to believe we won\u2019t see the game become officially available in South Africa soon.<\/p>\n

More on Pokemon Go<\/h3>\n

The 5 craziest places people have gone while playing Pokemon GO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

How you can download Pokemon Go in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon Go dev talks future plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon GO is more popular than Tinder<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can still get it, Niantic just isn\u2019t making it easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":91973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,6],"tags":[20380,73,20314],"class_list":["post-98646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","category-nintendo","tag-niantic-labs","tag-nintendo","tag-pokemon-go"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98648,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98646\/revisions\/98648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}