Niantic Inc, the developers of one of the most popular mobile games in Pokémon series, Pokémon GO, have added Hindi language to the game. Along with that, Pokémon Company has announced investments of Rs 125 crore in the Indian gaming sector over the next five years.
The company also plans to add more local languages in the future. During his visit to New Delhi, the director of the company Takato Utsunomiya said that they will be investing Rs 25 crore each year for the next five years.
“We are willing to invest because India has a strong gaming culture. While a lot of the games popular in India right now are battle-style games, we hope the adoption of Pokémon Go will increase in a similar way it had in Japan, where we had battle royale games, too. Our games keep people on the move, and promote a healthier lifestyle. So, we are a very different category from those games,” Utsunomiya said in his statement, as per Livemint.
Speaking on the development, Omar Tellez, the vice president of emerging markets, Niantic, talked about the importance of preparation when it comes to introducing something in the Indian market. While he believes that the move might not lead to a surge in the player base just because they have added the native language, it will help new players to adapt and understand the game.
As of now, Pokémon GO boasts over 65 million monthly active users around the world. To make the game even more popular, the company is planning to align the in-app purchase prices according to the local market economics along with adding various local payment options.
Since free-to-play games usually contain ads, the company has refrained from putting any that disrupts player experience. “We did discuss a wide range of banner ads and other formats, and somewhat experiment with them too but eventually chose to proceed slowly,” Niantic said.
While the original Pokémon series started back in 1996, Pokémon GO is the first implementation of the AR tech in the series. The company is also looking into the extended reality (XR) and metaverse implementation.