Rumors about a Pokémon GO and McDonald’s partnership to start using a sponsored location model broke out in the past few days and according to Tech Crunch this has inadvertently led to the cancellation of Japan’s Wednesday release.
While the game has already become available to over 30 countries Japan has been missing out on the wild phenomenon that the mobile game has become. Niantic CEO John Hanke had previously revealed to Forbes that the game has not come out yet to the Japanese market to ensure that the release would be backed by enough server capacity to handle the likely high demand that it would generate.
Nintendo’s valuation has already significantly increased thanks to the game’s unprecedented success and the Japanese release is expected to not only help Nintendo’s stock but McDonald’s stock as well. Aside from the huge revenue from in-app sales Niantic intends to increase profits by allowing businesses to become sponsored locations that can create in-game gyms in order to generate some very real foot traffic. According to a leaked email, McDonald’s is set to become the first partner by placing a gym at each of their over 3,000 Japanese locations.
Japan was set to GO on Wednesday morning but as the email went viral the launch time was pushed back to early afternoon and was then ultimately cancelled due to concerns that the hype generated would result in overloaded game servers, Tech Crunch reports.
Looks like we’ll have to wait to hear how it goes with Pokémon GO’s first sponsored locations, but the release is imminent and some sources are reporting that it may be as soon as Thursday.
