Pokemon GO Data mining Reveals Potential McDonald’s Partnership

It seems like that people behind Pokemon GO might be brewing something with McDonald's for the fans. It's still a long shot but not impossible.

According to data strings found by Manu Gil, McDonald’s might be the next hotspot for Pokemon catchers in Pokemon GO.

Pokemon GO has been a huge success. Its popularity keeps skyrocketing by the day, with the numbers of users surpassing that of people who watch porn.

It’s no surprise then that Niantic would be looking to pursue partnerships with a large fast food chain such as McDonald’s.

Manu Gil has managed to decompile the android version of Pokemon GO and discovered strings that hinted towards an as of yet inactivated hot spot for Pokemon, hamburger chain giant McDonald’s.

Redditors meanwhile have also had discoveries of their own. One KcYoung managed to extract a McDonald’s logo from unpacked game assets.

Other redditors have attested to stumbling on the same strings and logo deep in the game files. Developers generally keep traces of future updates in game files and so this always led to leaks and rumors.

Chief Executive John Hanke had previously stated that Pokemon GO will introduce sponsored locations in the future. “There is a second component to our business model at Niantic, which is this concept of sponsored locations,” said Chief Executive John Hanke.

Ingress, Niantic’s previous augmented reality game, also featured the same model. Sponsorships seem like a logical next step for Pokemon GO and it’s like a match made in heaven, it’s perfect. Certainly, though, it can pose some dangers, as some lunatics have exploited location features to lure unsuspecting victims to rob them.

Nonetheless, this should prove beneficial for both McDonald’s and Niantic. Would be fun to just walk into your local McDonald’s one day for a burger and get an Onyx on top of that for your troubles.

We should expect to hear more about this very soon from Niantic. Would you like such a partnership or you don’t care? Let us know in the comments below.

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Ali is a passionate RPG gamer. He believes that western RPGs still have a lot to learn from JRPGs. He is editor-in-chief at SegmentNext.com but that doesn't stop him from writing about his favorite video ...