The fallout and analysis of the debacle that was last weekend’s Pokemon Go Fest continues, as Niantic has been pressed for answers on why such a widespread failure happened — and why it couldn’t have been anticipated.
Niantic CEO John Hanke penned an enormous blog post about the event’s missteps yesterday and pinpointed exactly what went wrong. “Technical issues with our game software caused client crashes and interfered with gameplay for some users,” he said. “A more protracted problem was caused by oversaturation of the mobile data networks of some network providers.”
Hanke said that the studio delivered estimates to its carrier partners but that the overload happened anyway. Even with the frustrations, over the course of the weekend Chicago event players captured more than 7.7 million Pokémon, including more than 440,000 legendary Pokémon.
Our take? This was Niantic being Niantic, and that needs to change ASAP.
