Pokemon Go players will undoubtedly know that the Starbucks locations have become a big part of the game, as they have partnered with the game to make many of their locations Pokestops and Gyms. However, that promotion that was announced last year has just been greatly expanded upon, with thousands more being added to the original 7,800 locations.
Developer Niantic has now announced that over 5,000 more locations have been added to the current locations, increasing the amount somewhere around 13,000 locations. These additional locations will either be Pokestops or Gym, though it was not revealed how many of each were added. Starbucks even made a Pokemon Go Frappucino in honor of this collaboration.
Niantic CEO John Hanke said that “the physical locations component of the collaboration is important to us as we look for ways to use technology to encourage exploration, exercise and real world social interaction, and Starbucks’ footprint throughout the U.S. provides an awesome platform.” The promotion definitely makes a lot sense considering how many Starbucks locations there are, and adding more Pokestops/Gyms to the game won’t get any complaints from regular players of the game.
We recently learned that Pokemon Go’s holiday promotions proved to be very successful with fans, as the game finished 2016 with its highest weekly revenue since its launch. This resulted in nearly $5 million being spent on in-app purchases on December 31st alone. As for what the developer did in order to get so many people back on board, they allowed players to acquire things like free egg incubators over the span of several days, as well as adding new Pokemon to the mix.
As of right now it remains to be seen what Niantic has in store for Pokemon Go in 2017, as there are a lot of Pokemon that have not been added to the game. The game launched with most of the first generation of Pokemon being available, though others were added gradually throughout the year with subsequent updates.
