Augmented Reality (or AR as the cool kids call it) has been around for many years. What’s interesting is how a popular 90s/2000s video game character manage to revive itself with such little fanfare. What was the secret sauce? Is it because it’s AR, or Pokemon nostalgia, both or something totally different with the new approach? 

I was intrigued by why it’s so popular. Personally having played it on and off for the past 24 hours has me stumped. As someone in their late thirties and have too much on my mind, I just won’t have time to nurture my collection of Pokemon, and the AR bit isn’t really 100% constant AR experience really (you’re only in AR when you catch Pokemon and Battling to keep your Gym) and even then you can turn off AR – and I found myself turning it off more often than not as I feel stupid spinning myself around to try catch a Pokemon. 

For a teenager or 20 something person with little care about parenting, work or sleep, I can see this being incredibly addictive. This is just going to be a fad that last for a few weeks or months. In Australia, they timed it just right with the School Holidays and in the US many are coming off 4th July and into Summer holidays. I would like to see how far this get when it runs later into the year when the hype dies down. 

For now, awesome work in reviving yourself Nintendo, what’s your next trick to keep the streak running? Gaming consoles are dying, other toy brands are branching out beyond just games and into other merchindising. So maybe Nintendo needs to capitalise on this and push out merchindising whilst the iron is hot and create a new generation of Pokemon diehards.