It’s been a pretty darn good summer for Pokemon Go, according to a new post on Niantic’s official site. In it, the team celebrates the three global Pokemon Go events held over the summer in Dortmund, Germany; Chicago, USA; and Yokosuka, Japan, where over 400,000 trainers came together to collaborate in massive global quests. According to Niantic’s statistics, there’s been a whopping 35% increase in active players since May of this year, and since the addition of the game’s new social features in June, “more than 113 million Friend connections have been made and 2.2 billion Gifts have been sent to friends, showcasing how Trainers truly enjoy interacting with one another and playing together.”
Niantic says that there’s a lesson to be learned here: “While the headlines are filled with examples of technology being used to divide us, our experiences this summer deepen our conviction that technology can be harnessed to . . . bring us all closer together.” In that vein, the post announces that Niantic has been working with the Knight Foundation to establish programs that “tie AR games to civic engagement” by “[providing] select community leaders the tools to integrate Pokemon GO into Open Street events in cities across the U.S.”
The post concludes by teasing what lies ahead for both Pokemon Go and Niantic’s other games: “Even as summer fades in the Northern Hemisphere, we are working on some surprises for Pokemon GO this Fall to give Trainers even more ways to play together.” In addition, Niantic will be celebrating the six-year anniversary of Ingress with the launch of Ingress Prime, which will “[incorporate] improvements developed in the Niantic Real World Platform” into a rebooted version of Niantic’s AR game that started it all. And last, but not least, Potterheads will be pleased to be reminded that as we’ve previously covered, the company is still “hard at work on the next evolution of Niantic Real World games, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.”
