When Niantic first launched Pokemon GO, they experienced so much traffic that they had to shut the servers down and hold off on launching from other countries until they could resolve the issue. However it was only recently that it came to light just how much traffic the game got at its launch, and from that we can see why Niantic did what they did.In a post on the Google Cloud Platform Blog (via IGN), Luke Stone, Director of Customer Reliability Engineering revealed that within 15 minutes of the game just launching in Australia and New Zealand, traffic had already exceeded Niantic’s initial expectations. The company had set a worst case estimate that would be 5x more than their estimations, but as it turns out (see chart above), it was 50x more.
According to Stone who goes into detail about how Niantic and Google worked to resolve this, “Not everything was smooth sailing at launch! When issues emerged around the game’s stability, Niantic and Google engineers braved each problem in sequence, working quickly to create and deploy solutions.”
“Google CRE worked hand-in-hand with Niantic to review every part of their architecture, tapping the expertise of core Google Cloud engineers and product managers — all against a backdrop of millions of new players pouring into the game.” Safe to say that Pokemon GO was a hit both in terms of app launches and how it has impacted society. Granted the hype has died down a bit since, but it does go to show the possibilities of what location-based gaming and augmented reality have to offer.
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