Pokemon Go Update: Niantic Partners With Sprint For More Pokestops

By Louell Lopez - 08 Dec '16 05:00AM

The makers of Pokemon Go, Niantic, will be teaming up with Sprint in order to create a greater reality-based video game experience before 2017 ends.

According to CNET, Pokemon Go collaboration with Sprint will further secure a special game-playing experience inside the former's 10,500 locations around the U.S. which includes Boost Mobile and Radioshack popups.

In addition to this new Pokemon Go gyms wherein players can battle and train, Niantic will also blessed this partnership with Sprint by letting players, access Pokémon Go-branded in-store charging stations. This supplementary lure for players will give them the ability to recharge their handsets inside the store premises, taking into consideration that units quickly lose battery power during game time.

Niantic is also planning to release new Pokemon to Pokemon Go which will be announced on Dec. 12. Details of this event will be shared on their social media channels on the said date. This statement seems to confirm information uncovered last month when data miners discovered references to Pokémon 152 through 251 in the Pokédex.

Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO is extremely positive on this venture and hopes to reel in a good number of participants in all of their branches.

"We're in the business of creating traffic in our stores," Claure was quoted in USA Today.

Pokémon Go famously became a viral international sensation last summer, when the augmented reality-based, location-oriented mobile app was downloaded 500 million times in the first two months after it became available.

The Sprint collaboration comes after the collaboration with Softbank and McDonald's this year, as mentioned in Reddit. Last November, mobile operator Softbank assembled their own PokéStops and Gyms within the premises of their more than 3,000 stores. This summer, The Pokémon Company connected a Pokemon Go event launch in Japan with a nationwide promotion involving McDonald's Japan's more than 3,000 locations. The fastfood chain's restaurants became PokéStops and Gyms and served limited-edition Pokémon Happy Meal toys.