Sorry to burst your bubble, but rumors saying Pokemon Go will go live in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia by July 15 might remain just that: rumors.
In a letter sent to U.S.-based gaming website IGN earlier today, Fortyseven Communications vice president Chris Kramer wrote:
‘The team is currently heads down working on the game. We do not have any announced plans for countries beyond New Zealand, Australia, [the] U.S., and Germany at the moment.’
Fortyseven is the agency that represents Niantic, which developed the augmented-reality game together with Nintendo affiliate Pokemon Company.
However, don’t be disheartened. As we are writing this, news broke that Pokemon Go is already official in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. So while the app may not arrive in the Philippines today, at least its global roll-out has been ramped up. The guys behind Niantic seem to be hard at work bolstering server capacity.
Niantic head John Hanke even told Reuters that Pokemon Go will go live in Japan soon and that he “expects ultimately to launch the game in South Korea, where Google’s mapping functions are restricted due to security issues with North Korea.”
The plan is to launch it in 200 countries and regions relatively soon. Cross your fingers the Philippines is one of them.
My take: I’m disappointed when I see tech bloggers use headlines like “Pokemon Go geo-blocked in PH” and “Pokemon Go to go live in PH in 48 hours” when they haven’t even interviewed anyone from Niantic. That’s giving blogging a bad name. Let’s all work together to raise our reporting standards please.
Why use headlines like ‘Pokemon Go geo-blocked in PH’ and ‘Pokemon Go to go live in PH in 48 hours’ when you haven’t even interviewed anyone from Niantic?
My partner Ramon Lopez’s take: There’s been a lot of talk about when Pokemon Go will be available for download on other markets, and while I share the enthusiasm of fans who have been clamoring for a release in their region, the misinformation needs to stop. It starts with tech journalists being more responsible with the language they use to tell their stories and the sources they cite. The public has the right to information, and we owe it to them to be as factual and thorough as possible.
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