The press conference of Pokémon GO with Turkish language support was held at JW Marriott Bosphorus yesterday. Leading names of technology and press were also present at the event. Event was attended by Zoe Zhang, Product Marketing Manager, Emerging Markets of Niantic, and Nazih Fares, Head of Communications and Localization at The 4 Winds Entertainment (T4W).
Nazih Fares from T4W expressed his thoughts on the subject with the following words;
“We are very excited to be supporting Niantic in their launch of Pokémon GO in Turkey. This has been months of work to create a solid plan for a long-term commitment in the nation, filled with community and cultural relevant initiatives for the players.”
Fares then passed the microphone to Zhang. After starting her presentation with the first promotional video Niantic released for Pokémon GO in 2016, Zoe Zhang underlined that Turkey is a market they care about and are here permanently. Zoe continued with these words;
“We are tremendously pleased to be able to bring Pokémon GO to Turkey with a localized Turkish app, and we’re grateful to the incredible trainer community in Turkey that helped us make this possible. We look forward to continuing to develop and grow the success of this title in Turkey.”
Turkish language support for Pokémon GO is currently active, and Trainers can explore the world of Pokémon in Turkish. Whether you are just starting this adventure or you are an experienced Trainer with years of experience, a brand new journey awaits you in any condition. It is stated that the Turkish version of Pokémon GO will be constantly developed and updated.
We, as Mobidictum, also attended the event and had a short interview with Niantic Emerging Markets Product Marketing Manager Zoe Zhang.
Melis: What are Niantic’s future plans for the Turkish market?
We are thrilled to be here today. This week, we’re here to celebrate the launch of our Turkish version of the app here in Turkey. We’re not planning to be here just for this week; we plan to be here for the long term. In the future, some of the things we can look forward to for the Turkish market in Pokémon GO would include a lot of content such as events both online and offline. We’re really excited to bring not only offline events that you can attend in person but also online content inside the game that corresponds to certain things like local holidays and festivals. So, this is just the beginning! We’re so excited to continue developing and bringing great content to the Turkish market.
Melis: It is said that Pokémon Go will work integrated with Pokémon Sleep. Will Pokemon Sleep be localized in the same way?
At the moment, we don’t have any plans to continue developing Pokémon Sleep. That’s all we can say about the future.
Melis: Do you have a plan for Pikmin Bloom localization?
Pikmin Bloom launched a few months ago and we are thrilled with the results. At the current stage, we don’t have localization plans for various languages just yet. However, it is both a very interesting and promising title for us.
Melis: During the presentation, you talked about an upcoming event in İstinye Park, could you tell us more about this event?
Yes, we will have an event over the weekend of March 18-19-20th in İstinye Park. This will be an event that is going to feature a lot of exciting challenges and activities that people can join. We’ve chosen to go indoors for this event because it is a bit cold outside right now. Seasoned Trainers can join the event and enjoy playing with their friends and might even end up making new friends. If you’re new to the game or have not played for a while, we’ve created a lot of fun activities and challenges to help you learn new features in the game and get started. We want to thank our existing community members while welcoming new Trainers to our community.
Melis: During your presentation you mentioned the revenue of the game surpassed 2 billion dollars, right?
That’s right. Pokémon GO is one of the most successful mobile games of all time. Since our launch, we’ve had more than 1 billion downloads around the globe and we’ve been very fortunate that between 2016 and I believe last year, which was our 5th anniversary, we had 2 billion dollars revenue on this game. So, we’re very lucky and grateful to our Trainer community for all their support. We look forward to our next 1 billion downloads in markets such as Turkey.
Melis: There’s also a special trailer, celebrating the Turkish version of Pokémon GO! We saw it during the launch event, but it hasn’t been revealed to the Turkish audience just yet. How do you feel about this movie and its value for our market?
That’s a very good question! I think the value of shooting this trailer and this hero video here in Istanbul truly communicate the reason why we are here. We don’t want to simply drop a game and leave. We really want to connect in a locally relevant way with our new audience. Once they see this trailer, they’ll see a lot of familiar locations and settings. I believe this will not only make them feel the nostalgia for a game they might already know but also allow them to connect with the game further once they see places belonging to their own neighborhood.
