Pokemon Go Plus Accessory Sold Out, Players Frustrated

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The Pokemon Go Plus accessory has been sold out, according to Nintendo. The news might come as disappointing to many fans and veteran players of the game who are already frustrated with the shortage of the gadget and the exorbitant price charged for the accessory on eBay and other online platforms, reports itechpost.

Nintendo apologies for shortage

Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima issued a statement after seeing the reaction to the stock shortages. During the recent earnings report, Kimishima said the company was not expecting such demand for the peripheral.

“Demand far exceeded our expectations and production has not caught up, leading to product shortages. We apologize to the consumers and distributors affected by this,” he said.

However, players can heave a sigh of relief as Nintendo also announced that it is expanding the production of the accessory. Kimishima said that in order to cope up with the increasing demand, the company has expanded its production and will continue to ship out additional units, says itechpost.

This is, however, not the first time the company has apologized to its players for the scarcity of its accessories. Previously, the company apologized for a stock shortage of its Amiibo range. At that time also, the company said that it would expand production and ship more units soon, notes itechpost.

Pokemon Go: 600 million downloads already

Apology alone does not negate the fact that the company should have been able to gauge demand of its accessories and characters. Nintendo can defend itself saying that the massive popularity of Pokemon Go was a bit of surprise, but then there were many who predicted that the accessibility of the game would lead to massive popularity.

The game’s popularity is evident from the fact that it has already been downloaded more than 600 million times. John Hanke, chief executive of Pokemon Go and Ingress developer Niantic, recently testified in the U.S. Senate during a hearing on augmented reality.

Hanke revealed that Pokemon Go has been downloaded more than 600 million times and was actively played in more than 100 countries in a four-month time frame after the release of the game. Hanke accepted that Niantic was not expecting such huge popularity and was caught completely off guard.

“With the unanticipated popularity of the game, we had a couple of outages as we scaled up, and of course, hacking was a constant and costly nuisance,” he testified.

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