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This will be its first stop in Asia

Pokémon Go, the GPS-powered augmented reality (AR) game which has taken the world — or rather, US, Canada, Australia and Europe — by storm, will finally be launched in an Asian country tomorrow, according to TechCrunch. Further launches in Asia is expected in the coming weeks.

This move is long overdue considering the launch of the game caused Nintendo’s stock to soar 71 per cent last week. Last Friday, the Japanese gaming giant traded US$4.5 billion worth of stocks, making it the most traded Japanese stock in a single day this century, beating the likes of Tokyo Electric, SoftBank, and Nippon Steel.

While Nintendo owns the license, the game was solely developed by US-based software company Niantic. Before Pokémon Go, it spent nearly four years fine tuning Ingress, a science fiction AR game with similar mechanics. The game has garnered over 7 million downloads and was well received by critics, spawning communities on Facebook and Google+.

Downloads for Pokémon Go, on the other hand, has already surged past 15 million downloads according to research firm SensorTower.

Fans in Asia have been eager to get their hands on the game, with some resorting to workarounds such as VPNs but encountering technical difficulties such as empty maps.

CEO of Niantic, John Hanke, told Forbes the delay in launches can be attributed to insufficient server capacity.

The post Pokémon Go will land in its country of origin: Japan, tomorrow! appeared first on e27.

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