Skip to main content

Did Niantic Labs Drop the Ball With Pokemon Go?

When it came to mobile games this summer, Pokemon Go was king. Question is; do you think Developer Niantic dropped the Pokeball with the game?
#PokemonGo #NianticLabs #Pokemon #Nintendo #Android #iOS



Pokemon Go is an Augmented Reality game Developed by Niantic Labs that lets you capture Pokemon is real life using your iPhone or Android phone (Check out our review of the game here…). This game has over 100 Million downloads on the Google Play Store alone. Pokemon Go single handily boosted the Nintendo Stocks higher than they have been in over 5 years (at least until investors realized Nintendo's hand in the project is a lot smaller than they thought). The game has reinvigorated interest in the franchise, and brought in a slew of new users who have never played a Pokemon game before. This is setting up Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon to be the biggest Pokemon Release in recent years. With all this good how can there be any bad…?

Well, when you look a bit closer you will see that Pokemon Go is pretty buggy and Niantic Labs hasn’t been transparent with their updates nor with their bug fixes. This game had so much potential and hype only grew once the game came out of beta and was officially released. Within the first few updates Niantic managed to kill off their tracker, making it just about impossible to track the Pokemon on your nearby list. This is where 3rd party developers stepped in and started to create “Tracker Apps” using the Pokemon Go API to place where Pokemon exact locations are on a map. In many ways this both fixed and broke the game (Hello Team Dragonite gyms). Eventually Nintendo and Niantic Labs (for the most part) put an end to this by threatening “Cease and Desist” and Perma-bans to people who create and use trackers and GPS Hacks. Niantic did finally give user a half ass'd tracker back but it still doesn’t help much.

Fans of the game offered up suggestions to Niantic Labs to help improve the game, Like adding a 1v1 battle system, Trading, Adding a compass tracker, Pokedex Tracker, Ability to Buy Potions and Poke-Type Lures, and more. Niantic Labs pretty much ignored all these suggestions. It has already been announced they plan to add a Poke-Buddy which should be in the next game update (find out more here).

Thoughts
I feel like Pokemon Go probably might have been too big of a project for Niantic Labs. Nintendo, and GameFreak should have lent more of a hand to them. This was a big project to begin with but after it blew up so big Nintendo Should have stepped in to try to keep up with maintaining the game. Many users got turned off by the bugs and lack of a competent poke tracker. In my opinion Niantic Labs did drop the ball but I can’t hold them solely responsible. All in all they still have many devoted fans and if they want to keep them they need to start listening to them.

What are your Thoughts?


Comments