Razer wants to take you on a Poké-tour with its new ‘Pokémon Go’ social app

By Jon Martindale Published July 22, 2016

razer go pokemon chat app pokemongo header — Image used with permission by copyright holder

For a game that involves obsessively staring at your phone while you wander around local landmarks, Pokémon Go has proved to be quite a social experience, with teams and lures and real world meet ups all adding to the experience. Getting in touch with your fellow players is currently restricted to face to face communication though. RazerGo is designed to fix that when it goes live at 7 P.M. (Pacific) tonight, July 20.

RazerGo is a social applications that allows Pokémon Go players to talk to one another within a scalable radius: three miles, 60 miles, or 600 miles. You can adjust who you talk to, whether it’s your friends, team, or every player within that radius and all of this fits right inside the Pokémon Go interface, so it’s easily accessible.

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As much as Razer wants to help Pokémon trainers interact and improve the social aspect of the game, it’s also looking to bring groups of people together with it. As part of the launch of the app, Razer will be hosting guided Pokémon tours around San Francisco, hitting up various hotspots and spawn points, as well as giving away prizes and hosting special promotions at its (conveniently) nearby Razer Store.

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For those looking to join on, you’ll need to act fast, as the first Poké-crawl starts today, July 20 at 6PM at the RazerStore, which is located at Space 136, Westfield San Francisco Centre, 865 Market St.

This is the same “concept” store that Razer opened up back in May, offering gaming stations, a giant display wall and streams of various Esports and Let’s plays.

In order to take part in any of this though, you’ll need the Razer Go application as well as Pokémon Go. You likely already have the latter installed, so head to Razer’s official site to get the web-client version of the new chat-app (again, it will not be live until 7 P.M. Pacific on July 20). Official Android and iOS versions are incoming, expected to launch on July 25, or “as soon as possible” in some markets, according to Razer.

Once that’s complete, we’d recommend keeping an eye on Razer’s Twitter and Facebook social feeds, as more information will be posted there soon, including where abouts you might be headed on your very first Poké-tour.

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Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…

Gaming

Nintendo’s mobile games are more influential than you might think

Alear and Marth open a door in Fire Emblem Engage.

Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts fairly underwhelming and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company of Nintendo’s stature. While nothing ever quite reached the high bar Pokémon Go set in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are a bit more influential than they get credit for.
Over the past few years, games like Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have built upon their mobile counterparts. Then, during the September 13 Nintendo Direct, Fire Emblem Engage’s announcement and main gimmick cemented that Nintendo isn’t just viewing mobile games as a mostly failed side experiment. While they might not be the most successful games out there, their DNA is creeping into the Nintendo Switch’s bestselling titles.
Mediocre mobile returns
Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts kicked off in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which quickly became a smashing success in 2016. In the six years since, the game has generated around 678 million installs and $6 billion in player spending, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While working with Niantic proved fruitful for The Pokemon Company, Nintendo partnered with DeNA for most of its initial mobile games. Unfortunately, none of these quite reached the heights analysts and Nintendo expected. Super Mario Run was a smash hit at launch but failed to sustain much interest and consistent revenue, so it’s considered a disappointment by Nintendo.
Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they’ve still made lots of money for Nintendo, most haven't matched the success of the most popular mobile titles. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. It’s had over $1 billion in player spending alone as of June 2022 and is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the [mobile} platform,” according to Sensor Tower.
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokemon Go with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, although that game has reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people are surprised to see only a couple of surefire mobile hits from a company with the pedigree of Nintendo and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. If you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo put out since, though, it isn’t ignoring everything learned while making mobile games.
Mobile's monumental impact
Nintendo has the masterful ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, draw those out, and then expand upon them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this time and time again with subsequent entries of its flagship series, but it’s a mindset it has applied to its mobile games upon closer inspection.
As far back as 2018, Pokemon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle a Pokemon to capture it, and incorporated that into a traditional RPG experience. More recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was able to revive its live service offerings by repurposing the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour.
Fire Emblem Engage – Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch
The legacy of Nintendo’s mobile games could also be felt in the September 13 Nintendo Direct. The showcase’s first announcement was Fire Emblem Engage, which is turn-based strategy game where the main gimmick is being able to summon classic Fire Emblem characters with a ring. While it doesn’t look like Fire Emblem Engage goes full gacha, it’s clear that Nintendo recognized how people liked collecting and using classic Fire Emblem characters in a new adventure, so the developers drew and expanded upon that idea for Fire Emblem Engage.
Before the announcement of Pikmin 4, Shigeru Miyamoto also took a lot of time to highlight Pikmin Bloom. While we don’t know much about Pikmin 4’s gameplay, Nintendo could find some aspects of that game’s exploratory experience, weekly challenges, or something I’m not even thinking of to freshen up the next mainline game. The same could even happen with Super Mario Run the next time Nintendo decides to make a 2D Mario game.
While watching Fire Emblem Engage’s reveal during the latest Nintendo Direct, it became clear that Nintendo’s mobile games have quietly become influential forces in the company's console games. Nintendo has slowly plucked the best ideas out of them and brought them into Switch games without extra monetization. While the future is cloudy for Nintendo's seemingly stalled mobile push, I hope the company can still find a place for its games on mobile, using the platform as a space to experiment with its beloved series.

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Pokémon Go studio cancels four titles, including its Transformers game

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Niantic, the hitmaker behind Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom, is buckling up for some hard times. The company announced it has canceled the production of four games and laid off 8% of its staff.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Niantic CEO John Hanke wrote a companywide email saying that around 85 to 90 employees were getting laid off. Hanke explained that the company has been "facing a time of economic turmoil" and has resorted to "reducing costs in a variety of areas." That meant canceling four games, including Transformers game, Heavy Metal, and Hamlet.