It’s been kind of a wild week for Nintendo. First, the company’s stock price took a hit when investors finally thought to Google “who owns pokemon franchise.” Then, it posted a not-insubstantial first quarter loss thanks to a killer combination of sluggish Wii U sales and the strong yen.
On top of that, gamers awoke this morning to discover that the release of the Pokémon GO Plus, the Bluetooth smart wearable that serves as a phone-free way to interact with the wildly successful Pokémon GO app, has been delayed. Originally touted—by an off-the-cuff remark from Shigeru Miyamoto during an E3 Q&A—as being commercially available by the end of this month, the arrival of the Plus has now been pushed back to September.
Nintendo gave no reason for the delay, so it could be anything from production issues to actual hardware concerns to simply a move at buying some time while Niantic continues to shore up the always-overtaxed Pokémon GO servers. At any rate, don’t look for the Pokémon GO Plus to hit retail shelves any time in the immediate future, and we’ll strive to share additional news regarding the release as it becomes available.
Z: also can be a way to shorten the gap between. Black Friday / CiberMonday madness !
Or just have enough gadgets for the demand .
I hadn’t thought about it as a way to put the device out a little closer to the holiday shopping season, Randall. Good point! I’m not sure if changing the date was done specifically to ramp up production to meet the projected demand, but I hope that’s at least one helpful side effect. Anyone who tried to chase down all those wave one amiibo certainly remembers that Nintendo can sometimes underestimate how many products to put into retail circulation. 🙂