Pokemon Go - In-App Purchases

[Otamajakushi]

Pokemon Go is coming out on a market where in-app purchases are the norm, unfortunately. Look at Pokemon Shuffle. Part of the reason why Pokemon Shuffle is so unenjoyable to me is that it relies too heavily on overused/cliché mobile gaming mechanics. Some of these mechanics include:

1. Set amount of lives that regenerate every X minutes.
2. Premium currency that gives lives.
3. Non-premium currency that can be bought with premium currency.

The economy in that game is atrocious. But let's go back to Pokemon Go. Some have speculated that Pokemon Go will have users buy Great/Ultra balls for real money. Some think that it will have users buy "slots" to battle rare Pokemon. What kinds of in-app purchases do you think will be in this game? And, how do you feel about that?

In my opinion, how successful this game is will be directly affected by the amount of in-app purchases there are and how these purchases affect the overall experience. Pay to win, or pay to play. Either way, both are terrible.

 

[Drayton]

I don't want common pokeballs like Pokeball, Great Ball or Ultra Ball to becoming In-app purchase since they don't have great catch rate or modifiers and just 1.0x, 1.5x and 2.0x also not greater than 2.0x. Is best for these balls to obtain somewhere, while balls like heavy ball or masterball should be purchase as in-app purchase also like several recoveries that is not max or full restore and just common potions, super potions and hyper potions should be earn differently instead in-app purchase. I believe TM will be sold as in app purchase.

 

[Bounsweet]

Those speculations about the Great Balls and Ultra Balls are from badly Photoshopped "leaked" images that someone decided to circulate. I do not think that there will be many microtransactions in all honesty. From what I remember about when I played Ingress, there was nothing that required you to buy anything, the purpose of Ingress is to explore (via car is really common) and explore the area, notable landmarks, to "claim" a location, or in this case what would be a Pokémon. That's assuming that it has similar gameplay.

From what they're aiming for with the marketing, I don't see any (or many, at least) microtransactions that would function along the lines of, "You've ran out of hearts! Buy another for $.99?" I think it's going to have more to do with area coverage than being able to just sit around your neighborhood and having to buy more "lives" every hour or so.