If Pokemon GO Is Down, The Government Did It

By the time you read this article, the United States Air Force may well be testing their newest protocols involving GPS. As such, it's entirely possible that Pokemon GO doesn't work – or you're told you can't access GPS, and cannot play as a result. What happens when a game that depends entirely on GPS loses that one crucial component?

The United States Air Force is set to test some precautionary technology that relies on a variety of wireless signals to navigate. Navigation for war machines – silent fighters, airplanes of the night... you know – that sort of thing. It's called NAVSOP, and when the bad guys launch their own GPS attacks, the USAF will (hopefully) be ready. The tradeoff is a test run here in the USA that'll intermittently chop off our access to GPS.

That means no Pokemon GO, and a real nightmare for those users that've dedicated their every waking moment to the game! So we're back to thinking about the big picture. Where the game is, and where it's going.

We're nearing the end of the Gen 3 releases for Pokemon GO already, and it's only January of 2018. We've got more than enough Pokemon to have millions of trading combinations, and teams of Pokemon for PvP could just as well number in the thousands, or millions too. So why aren't we there yet?

SEE: How Pokemon GO failed us all

Because there are more Pokemon to release! Why would Niantic not want to release every single Pokemon before they started adding new features to the game again? That'd be just madness. Why fix something if it isn't broken?

All trainers need to worry about now is how they're going to play when the air force launches their GPS blaster. Maybe trainers will just have to deal by playing a different game. Or maybe by reading a book? Nah, just kidding. That's just crazy talk.

One thing you needn't worry about is the potential cash Niantic might be missing out on. Based on our understanding, the first year Pokemon GO was active was so extremely successful, Niantic's basically set for years to come. Estimates put Niantic's revenue for the first year anywhere from $900-million in the first 12 months to over a billion in June of 2017.

As such, Pokemon GO should be getting a super grand infusion of developer aid near the end of... wait. What's that you say? The year 2017 already ended, and we're already nearing the end of January, and Pokemon GO is pretty much the same game as it was at the start of the fourth quarter of 2017? Oh good, good for that.