Sorry no go: Niantic Labs officially says Pokemon GO not coming to SEA yet

Pokemon Go

The mobile augmented reality game that has taken the world by storm–Pokemon GO has been heavily rumoured to be available to the SEA region tomorrow. Sorry to burst your bubble folks. Not going to happen.

At least not according to fortyseven.com, representatives of Niantic Labs. The makers of Pokemon GO says there are no plans to expand the game outside its current handful of supported countries. The game is currently available in selected countries including New Zealand/Australia, US, UK, Japan and Europe.

Pokemon Go

In an official email announcement, fortyseven.com said,

“The team is currently heads down working on the game. We do not have any announced plans for countries beyond New Zealand, Australia, US and Germany at the moment.”

While not being able to download from Google Play or the App Store, you can sideload an apk from various sources. However, don’t expect to find Pokemon monsters around (although intermittently users could) as the game is region-locked.

Pokemon Go

A recent report from SimilarWeb revealed that Pokemon GO in the US has surpassed Twitter’s daily users and gamers spend more time on in than Facebook. It even surpassed dating app Tinder in terms of installs. Move over Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Pokemon Go

It saw some 21 million daily active users in the US, tipping even Candy Crush’s peak audience in 2013. It is in fact “the biggest US mobile game ever.”

via GIPHY

Is this a smokescreen for a surprise tomorrow? Who knows? For now Pokemon fans, stay hopeful but don’t expect a miracle.

Source: IGN SEATechcrunch

Vernon
Vernon is the founder and chief editor of Vernonchan.com. A graphic designer by profession, he has a deep love for technology, cars, gadgets, food, and travel. He tweets too much and is also known as a caffeine bacterium ("life's too short for bad coffee"). Bleeds Blue (go Chelsea FC!) and considers BMW, Porsche, Alfa Romeo cars to have in the garage--hallmarks of a true petrolhead.