McDonald’s Japanese business said it is working with the developers of Pokemon Go as they bring the hit Nintendo Co game to the country.
McDonald’s Holdings Co, the fast-food giant’s affiliate in Japan, expects to start collaborating with Pokemon Go soon, according to a statement responding to news reports.
Developers are working intensely on the Japanese version of the smartphone-based game so that it runs smoothly, the company said.
Photo: AP
Earlier this week, the company announced it would feature figurines based on Pokemon characters such as Pikachu in its Happy Meals.
Pokemon Go, which spurs players to venture into the real world and “catch” creatures using their smartphones, has sparked a worldwide frenzy. McDonald’s Japanese business is forecasting its first annual sales gain in eight years, as the company recovers from a series of food scandals.
The game, which can be downloaded for free to users’ smartphones, may help retailers and restaurants attract customers into their establishments in search of virtual creatures.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on McDonald’s collaboration with Pokemon Go, saying its restaurants in Japan would serve as key locations for players.
For now, McDonald’s will not offer any Pokemon figurines with Happy Meals at its US locations, said Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for the Oak Brook, Illinois-based chain.
“We’re focused on The Secret Life of Pets and there are no Pokemon-themed toys planned at this time in the US,” McComb said.
Separately, Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s (王健林) Legendary Entertainment LLC will team up with the developers of the popular Pokemon Go game to make a live-action film based on the creatures.
Legendary, which is partnering with The Pokemon Co, will begin production next year for the movie, which will feature Detective Pikachu, according to a statement from the companies on Wednesday.
Toho Co will distribute the movie in Japan and Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures will do so internationally, according to the statement.
Legendary, a unit of Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group Co (大連萬達集團), is seeking to be the latest beneficiary of the frenzy surrounding Pokemon Go. The game’s popularity has led shares of Nintendo to nearly double this month, making it the best-performing stock on the MSCI World Index.
Since Pokemon was first introduced in Japan in 1996, more than 279 million video games based on the characters have been sold worldwide.
Meanwhile, Apple Inc stands to rake in US$3 billion in revenue from the Pokemon Go craze in the next one to two years as gamers buy “PokeCoins” from its app store, brokerage Needham & Co said.
Pokemon Go can be downloaded for free, but iPhone users can use PokeCoins to purchase additional features.
A pack of 100 PokeCoins costs US$0.99 in Apple’s app store, but the price can go up as much as US$99.99 for a pack of 14,500.
“We believe Apple keeps 30 percent of Pokemon Go’s revenue spent on iOS devices, suggesting upside to earnings,” Needham analyst Laura Martin wrote in a client note on Wednesday.
Pokemon Go, which has been rolled out in 35 countries, is also available on Android devices.
Martin said Pokemon Go’s ratio of paid users to total users was 10 times that of Candy Crush, the hit game from King Digital that generated more than US$1 billion of revenue in both 2013 and 2014.
Users in the US are spending far more time playing the game than they are using Facebook or WhatsApp, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Electronics retailers have also seen a bump in sales of mobile chargers and charging cases since the launch of the game.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”