At the time of writing, Pokémon GO is still not released in Japan, with various predictions about when it will be out being all over the place as well as also entirely wrong.
Earlier in the week, Wall Street Journal journalist Takashi Mochizuki was led to believe the game would be out before the end of the week. This would have made sense, considering the Western releases of the game had already occurred. Many thought this meant a release on Thursday as well, as games in Japan tend to be released on Thursdays before the weekend starts.
When Thursday passed without so much as a Pokémon peep, Dr. Serkan Toto reported that he’d heard the game would be out on Friday at 6 p.m. Well, we’ve passed that as well and still no sign of the game.
Currently, the only real indication of when the game may come out was of a very brief Amazon listing of July 29th for the Pokémon GO Plus peripheral, again reported by Takashi Mochizuki of the Wall Street Journal. While that date seems a long way off, it probably makes the most sense out of all the predictions thus far.
This is because the servers at the US launch of Pokémon GO crumbled under the weight of people using the app. Now, Pokémon is popular in the US but in Japan, it has an insanely massive following.
Japan is also the home of Pokémon and it is very clear Nintendo can’t afford to have their servers stumble at the launch of this game here.
Pokémon GO is very likely to have the same kind of explosive popularity on its release in Japan as it has had in the rest of the world. However, Japanese gamers are overall a lot fussier and if games don’t meet their expectations for whatever reason, the resultant backlash can be utterly savage.
Considering how important this game is for Nintendo, they absolutely cannot afford Pokémon GO to have any issues on its Japanese launch. So the current delay is likely a wise, albeit frustrating, one.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv.
Read my Forbes blog here.
