With over 500 million players, Pokemon GO is one of the most popular games in the world- but so far, it has managed to achieve this without the help of China, and the massive gaming market present there. That’s because, until now, the game has been barred from release.
That will all change this year, though. Speaking to Financial Times, John Hanke, the CEO of Pokemon GO developer Niantic, said that “We absolutely intend to bring our existing games into China. Beyond that, there are opportunities to build games in China, both for China and for the world.”
Hanke added that Niantic’s servers are better equipped to deal with the additional load that would come from the presumably millions of new players from China than they were in 2016- famously, the launch of the game was a bit of a trainwreck back then. Of course, this is assuming Pokemon GO takes off there like it did in the rest of the world- China is a fickle market, for all we know that will not happen.