Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm.
Nintendo's augmented reality mobile game was released Wednesday night and quickly became the top grossing game in the three countries where it's available. The game is currently doing the rounds as the main fuel for the internet memes machine and for social networks' posts, Forbes is calling it "the first example of an AR product becoming a national obsession."
Over the last few hours, we've all been bombarded by social networks posts of friends and friends of friends who just had to catch Pokémon in awkward places and restricted areas. But it's not only about social networks hype. News outlets too are flooded with Pokémon Go stories.
It started harmlessly enough when BuzzFeed reported a story about Jonathan Theriot who shared a photo of himself catching Pidgey on his pregnant wife's bed while she was waiting for her C-section. The photo went viral and it was viewed more than one million times in a few hours.
The situation then escalated quickly when a 26 years old Massachusetts driver caused one of the city's worst highway accidents when he stopped in the middle of the highway in order to catch a Pikachu.
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Weird news aside, Pokémon Go had one of the most successful game launches in recent years. Everybody expected Pokémon Go to be a hit, but Nintendo was still not prepared for the exceptional fans reaction. For the first two days, the servers were not able to handle the higher-than-expected number of players and most users were not able to play for several hours while Nintendo fixed its server issues. Nintendo also had to halt the game's global roll out while it adds installs servers. Those who have already downloaded the game in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand can still play it, while those in the U.K., the Netherlands and other countries will have to wait until Nintendo is confident it has enough servers to meet the demand.
Nintendo's stock rose by 9% the day Pokémon Go was released.
