COMMUNICA | No. 3
VIEWPOINT
Augmented reality apps and telecoms
HOW TELECOMS TECH HAS HELPED THE EVOLUTION OF POKEMON
By Rob Andrews
Picture: Communica Magazine
IN 2016 it’ s been difficult to escape the release of the most hugely anticipated smartphone game: Nintendo’ s Pokemon Go. Its release was so big, that in the first weekend, Pokemon Go even eclipsed the figures of social media giant Twitter and crashed its own servers in Japan, coping with a gargantuan uptake of more than 100 million global users in less than a week. Despite the marketing hype behind the app, its the technology behind it- from a telecoms perspective- has been somewhat forgotten but plays an important part in the franchise’ s reignition. For those who are not familiar with the concept of Pokemon, it’ s a £ 32bn franchise that stems from the original mid 1990s Gameboy game, where users can explore a ficticious world filled with a variety of monsters called Pokemon- 151 different types in the original game- although subsequent additions have been made since. The user captures, battles and trains Pokemon to fight / trade against other Pokemon trainers in the game or against friends. But this year Nintendo’ s app developer, Niantic brought the concept into the 21st Century by combining smartphone app technologies with the original
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Smartphone sensation: The Pokemon Go app has reignited the franchise
Gameboy concept. Part of Pokemon Go’ s success is the introduction of the app’ s‘ Augmented Reality’( AR) technology which allows Pokemon Go players to seek out the ficticious creatures in the‘ real world’ around the gamer. So instead of exploring the oncefictious regions on the original Gameboy, Pokemon Go app users are able to walk around in real life using their phones’ GPS technology to map their position and catch nearby Pokemon using their phones’ cameras. Players can also interact with real monuments; buildings, bus stops and signs- which are featured as
The concept of AR seeks to combine the app with the‘ real’ world
‘ Pokestops’ within the game. This in turn, allows Pokemon Go’ s gamers to receive items to allow them to progress to higher levels. Although accessible as a freeto-play downland all of this interaction through AR and GPS relies on the usage of cell phone mobile data which is provided by either fibre or from 3G / 4G networks. Seeing as most mobile tariffs are now geared towards data usage, this also will not have escaped the interest of the major cellular providers. And with Nintendo having benefitted hugely from the introduction of Pokemon Go, celebrating a major share price rise in June, one can assume similar technology and updates from Nintendo or its competitors is likely to follow on.