I didn’t realize … Pokemon Go have only just been launched in Australia and New Zealand. Well, it may be popular … but I hate the game!
Pokemon Go had some technical hurdles to overcome near its launch and we’ve known those were the result of a higher than expected number of users, but now Niantic has given some more details about the situation.
Speaking at GDC, Niantic’s Ed Wu said the game was basically over capacity within just two hours of launching. That contributed to performance issues and a slower roll out than expected.
Niantic came up with two traffic figures, one they expected would be reached and one that was a “ludicrous” amount five times higher. Those were given to Google, the hosting provider, ahead of Go’s launch in Australia and New Zealand.
Just in those countries, it took practically no time for the game to go past capacity. Major scaling was required to enable the game to successfully work in other markets like the US.
We knew that we had something special on our hands…when we nearly exceeded our peak worldwide capacity — the expected number — in a couple of hours and were trending well on the way towards that five times, ‘ludicrous’ number on what we thought would be less than five percent of our total world-wide … install base in. That was the point at which I called in the cavalry … at Google.– Wu
Source: Nextpowerup