Game on! Pokémon Go now available in Hong Kong – with added warnings
Yet stocks for online game developers and smartphone component suppliers mixed after local debut of augmented reality diversion
Pokemon Go, the augmented reality smartphone game which has taken the world by storm, was launched in Hong Kong on Monday, prompting multiple warnings against trespassing and straying into busy roads.
The city was quickly abuzz with excited talk about the game that allows players to use their phones’ GPS and camera to hunt for virtual Pokemon – short for Pocket Monsters – in the real world.
“I wasn’t really that interested at first, and then I got addicted,” Jamie Sie-to Chuk-man told the Post outside the bustling Times Square shopping mall in Causeway Bay.
Using a cartoon map, the game encourages players to explore and find real locations to catch and collect Pokemon as they appear anywhere randomly.
In some countries, where the game was first released earlier this month, some players have got too caught up in the game to care about their surroundings; some have landed themselves in trouble for trespassing on private property, tripping and falling, getting hit by vehicles, and even being robbed by opportunist criminals.