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