Nintendo is back in the game. Thanks to the unprecedented success of the augmented reality instaclassic Pokémon Go, Nintendo has added a cool $9 billion to its value. According toTechCrunch, Nintendo's stock price raised its total market cap to $28 billion as of close of trading Monday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
SensorTower came through with the statistics, showing just how powerful the Pokémon Go phenomenon really is. Hint: it's bigger than Tinder. In fact, the augmented reality game soared to the top of the App Store chart in just under 5 hours. Just one day after its initial launch, Pokémon Go was already listed as the 5th best grossing app in the U.S.
The good news for Nintendo, who serves as publisher on all Pokémon video game titles, will likely continue. After all, Pokémon Go hasn't even been released in several key (i.e. hella profitable) parts of the world yet. According to the Wall Street Journal, additional markets in Europe and Japan are expected to embrace the nostalgic Pokémon fever "within a few days."
For those not into things that are cool and hip and admittedly pretty dangerous, here's a catch-up: Pokémon Go is available on both iOS and Android devices, allowing for players to capture and train virtual Pokémon for battle. The catch? You (kinda) have to do this shit in the real world! That's what "augmented reality" means, fam.
But the real magic of all this is the fact that it's pretty much forcing lazy-ass Americans to learn the metric system. The game, as noted in Gizmodo's recent breakdown of its metric education abilities, doesn't allow you to switch the in-game units of measurement. Thus, it's kilometers or bust. Hello globalization!
