Pokémon GO Pokéstops to be Sponsored by McDonald’s in Japan?
The cultural phenomenon known as Pokémon GO has been around for a couple of weeks now and is available in most parts of the world. However, in that time a few things have come to light, hidden in the coding that might be the cause of the apps delayed released in Japan.
A keen eyed redditor noticed that there was a McDonald’s mention in the metadata:
“In /assets/bin/data/managed/metadata, I found a file that looked like it was promising,” Manu told Gizmodo via Reddit private message, “So I opened it in a hex editor. The first chunk was garbage, but I eventually got to a bunch of strings. I just searched things until I got things that were promising, for instance, I searched sponsor and partnership and got to the McDonald’s string set.”
So, yeah, this info came out on the internet approximately a week ago, I am still not sure how I feel about it. It seems that in one fell swoop Niantic have enabled people to get out and start exercising whilst simultaneously fattening them up.
This could be a good thing though; the cafes where I live do the same thing so why shouldn’t a corporation have the same luxury. I only hope that Niantic allow any establishment to do the same thing and apply for their own Pokéstops/Gyms.
Following on from this..
Pokémon GO Japan Release Delayed
Hot on the heels of Canada, Japan was finally going to enter the Poké-fray and the launch was set for yesterday evening GMT time.
Well great, or so we thought, unfortunately Niantic, McDonald’s and The Pokémon Company decided against it and went on to push the launch until today at the same time (maybe?)
The main reasoning for the delay had something to do with the leaked email that was spread across Japanese forums to do with corporate sponsorship deals relating to Gyms and Pokéstops – corroborating with the findings by the aforementioned reddit user, and highlighting connectivity problems and that fact that people might just end up hanging around and not buying the sponsor’s products.
The companies above explained that the hype generated could overload the game. But correct me if I am wrong here – I along with many others have been on location (red gyms need to be taken down) in the evening and server down is beginning to seem standard mode.
As we mentioned at the start, this game is a cultural, global phenomenon and, although loved by many, could begin to test the average player’s patience level. Niantic need to address these issues very quickly before the fad begins to fade.
McDonald’s in Japan have been building the hype with Pokémon happy meals and have seen their sales rise dramatically, whilst Nintendo have begun to drop off a little today; it seems the uneducated are beginning to understand that Nintendo did not make the game..
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