We’re not sure that this is an improvement, and it’s not as important as it would have been six months ago, but Niantic has just released its version of Pokemon Go for the Apple Watch. Now, you can see people stumbling around city streets looking at their watches like their parents did, instead of staring at their phones like their kids do.
Pokemon Go, in case you’ve been vacationing on another planet, is an augmented reality game that uses GPS and is built around the popular Nintendo characters. It was spectacularly popular for about six weeks, and has been tapering off ever since. Niantic’s been hyping it with seasonal characters and other features to keep user numbers up.
There’s a strong fitness element to the game, because you need to walk around to find the Pokemon, many of which you capture by swiping correctly on your device, and you need to walk further to “hatch eggs” that reward you with more monsters. All that walking counts toward completing your activity rings.
It sounds silly if you’re not part of the cult. But if you’ll excuse us, we have some app downloading to do.