Pokémon GO was released just a few days ago and is already taking the world by storm. The new game, created by Nintendo in partnership with Niantic, has made headlines all over the world. The experts are even talking about a new mania that is driving both the young and middle-aged crazy! In less than a week since its release in the United States, Pokémon GO is proving more addictive than Tinder and Snapchat, according to the official numbers, while an abundance of stories and crazy facts about the popular app are going viral. We’ve collected 25 Pokemon GO Facts that are making it the hottest thing at the moment. The real question is: Why bother searching for a date when you can say, “I choose you” to Pikachu? He’s probably cuter anyways! These are 25 Pokemon GO Facts You’ve Gotta know Before You Go.
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Pokémon GO is a game for smartphones based on Nintendo’s classic Pokémon games. The game has been released only in the US and Australia so far.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Nintendo has sold more than 277 million Pokémon games to date, over 21.5 billion trading cards in ten languages, and made seventeen feature films over the past two decades.
Source: nintendo.com, Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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Pokémon is a contraction of “Pocket Monsters.” The original game was made to give kids a feeling of what it was like to go out and collect things. The new game has turned that into a reality.
Source: gadgets.ndtv.com, Image: pixabay.com
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The good news is that it’s available for both Android and iOS. In other words: iPhone vs Samsung Galaxy . . . No problem!
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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If you are on the iPhone, the app has full access to your Google account, which is obviously excessive for a game. The company has stated that this is a mistake it will address with an update to the app.
Source: io9.com, Image: YouTube
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According to SimilarWeb, an incredible 62 percent of Android users in the US alone are currently playing the game every single day.
Source: similarweb.com, Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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Additionally and always according to SimilarWeb, as of July 11, Pokémon GO players on Android were playing an average of forty-three minutes and twenty-three seconds per day, which is about the average amount of time people spend on Facebook each day.
Source: similarweb.com, Image: pixabay.com
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Less than a week since its release, and Pokémon GO is reportedly bigger than Tinder in the US.
Source: Gizmodo.com, Image: pixabay.com
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What makes Pokémon GO such an overwhelming trend? Well, keep in mind that for you to find Pokémon to collect, and gyms to battle in, you have to walk around in the real world. Your character in the game walks and turns when you walk and turn.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Because some things are harder to get in life than others, the same applies to Pokémon GO. For example, to hatch Pokémon eggs, the game requires you to walk a set distance to accomplish this goal.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: YouTube
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What’s even harder is for you to pick up an extremely rare egg. If you’re that ambitious and adventurous, make sure you are in good shape because this might force you to walk more than six miles to get one.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: Wikipedia
Obsessed with Pokemon? Check out this list to see 25 Photos Of Pokemon In Real Life.
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In case you’re wondering how this game allows players to capture, battle, and train virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world, the answer is simple: it makes use of GPS.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Pokémon GO came out on July 6, and by the next day it was on more Android phones in the United States than the dating app ,Tinder, according to SimilarWeb. A day later, a whopping 5.16 percent of all Android devices in the US were rocking Pokémon GO.
Source: cnet.com, Image: Wikipedia
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The extreme and rapid popularity of the game has led many business owners to post warning signs on their properties. For example, there are many restaurants all over the country that have already made it clear that the Pokémon (eggs) in their businesses are for paying customers only.
Source: Gizmodo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Spotify streams of the Pokémon theme “Gotta Catch ’Em All” have increased 362 percent globally in the past week following the enormous success of Pokémon GO. Overall streams of Pokémon songs on Spotify have more than tripled.
Source: spotify.com, Image: youtube
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Gizmodo, in an attempt to highlight the new trend, created a funny compilation of people complaining on Twitter that they were sore after overusing their atrophied muscles to collect Pokémon all over town.
Source: Gizmodo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Unsurprisingly, with all the press and mania over the release of Pokémon GO worldwide, Nintendo’s valuation went up by $9 billion. Not so bad for a company that has, until just recently, avoided the mobile gaming market.
Source: nintendo.com, Image: Wikipedia
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However, that’s nothing if you think about how Pokémon sales and licenses alone have resulted in Nintendo earning an astounding $60 billion in revenue as of January 2016.
Source: nintendo.com, Image: YouTube
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And to think about it, Nintendo isn’t even the primary developer of Pokémon GO; that honor goes to Niantic, the team behind the previous mobile AR game, Ingress.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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The app isn’t available globally yet, and just as many people are using Pokémon GO on a daily basis as Twitter. It’s truly scary to think about how much bigger it will get once it's released worldwide.
Source: Business Insider, Image: pixabay.com
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If you happen to live outside the US, New Zealand, and Australia, according to some sources you will have to wait until July 15, when the game is expected to be released in Europe and Asia.
Source: Mirror.co.uk, Image: YouTube
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According to its developers, Pokémon GO is destined to help people with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Since it’s a game that requires people to physically get up and go outside, it encourages people with agoraphobia to leave their house, exercise, and engage with other people.
Source: pokemongo.com, Image: YouTube
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Getting people out of the house to play a video game means that things can get terrifying at times, especially for those players who go into strange alleys looking for Pokémon. If you think we are exaggerating, we’re not: a girl searching for a Pokémon ended up finding a dead body.
Source: cnn.com, Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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If scary or creepy things don’t discourage you, you have to be careful because there are savvy criminals who have already tried to take advantage of the new trend. Reportedly, police officers in O’Fallon, Missouri, arrested four people suspected of using Pokémon GO to lead their victims to remote areas to “catch” Pokémon characters and rob them.
Source: Time.com, Image: Wikipedia
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Last but not least, Gizmodo predicts that millions of young Americans will eventually learn the metric system all because of Pokémon GO, which forces you to think in kilometers instead of miles. So in case you were one of those people who thought that Americans will always think about distance in miles, Pokémon GO is about to change that for good.
Source: Gizmodo.com, Image: Wikipedia
Want more video games? Check out these 25 Most Popular Video Games Ever. (Hint: One of the Pokemon games is one of them!)