The full, final version of Pokémon GO was released in Australia and New Zealand yesterday. And while the game itself is free, loads of stuff inside it most certainly is not.
You start the game with a decent number of Pokéballs and some Incense (to attract Pokémon). You can get more through play (I got a few every time I levelled up, and as hinted above you can get stuff from real-world drop points), but the idea here is that you’ll have to pay if you want to really stock up.
Everything in the game costs gold, and you start with… 0 gold. Who knows if you get some every day/week afterwards as a reward or offer (which is what happened in the beta), but on day one of the actual release, I had nothing (not that I needed it, since I had more Pokéballs than I was going to use).
Here’s my inventory after throwing a few Pokéballs at the starter I found in my garage:
And here are some of the items you can buy in the store:
Ah, but how much are those coins actually worth in real human dollars? Here’s the coin section of the store (prices in Aussie dollars):
Twenty Pokéballs — likely the most common transaction — will run you $1.49, then, while if you want to buy 14,500 Pokécoins you should go have a cold shower and a good, long look in the mirror instead.
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20 responses to “Here Are Pokémon GO’s Microtransactions”
Seems like the games offline more than it is on atm anyway.
Haha, yea not workin for me either
Parents. Watch your credit cards 😀
You do get coins for having Pokemon in gyms.
I was defending two gyms last night, clicked the shield in the store and got 20 coins as well as 1000 of that dust stuff
Yep, turns out you get 10 coins per Pokemon you leave at a gym whether you are the leader or not. Though there seems to be a timer on spending the free coins?
I have not seen a time limit on the coins but there is a limit on how often you can claim them. Once every 24 hours it looks like.
I think the best theory would be to save up your days revives and potions and go smash a heap of gyms and lay down as many pokemon as you can before claiming your defender bonus.
Although I think I remember reading somewhere that there is a 10 (100 coin) limit on the bonus
Yup, same. No idea how much it scales up but it’s at least 10 coins per defender.
Yeah it looks like they shutdown the servers (or the servers were overloaded) because pretty much everybody not in the rollout areas downloaded the apk from 3rd party websites and were able to log on
So using the cost of pokeballs in the games to compare, the exchange rate of pokedollars to AU dollars is pd100 : $0.03725
AU$3.65 for a HP Up.
AU$1.12 for TM 09 – Take Down…
I was actually wondering last night if anyone was going to use the costs as a conversion rate for Pokemon’s in-game currency. Sure enough…
Free to play games are the childhood equivalent of pokies / exotic bets.
Let’s see:
Pokies – you sit in a chair and pull a lever for a game that is designed to make you lose money.
Ingress (haven’t spent enough time with PoGo yet) – game that has kept me engrossed for over 2 years before I felt the need to spend some money (about $8) and provided me with friends over the globe, encouraged me to get out of the house and walk hundreds of kilometres, gone on road tips, camping trips, explored my city and state and climbed mountains.
Yep, totally similar.
TBH I reckon the bigger backpack upgrade would be handy if I really get into this game. I have no trouble throwing a few dollars at an app for something useful. I would have a hard time paying for something temporary like pokeballs which won’t be in short supply, I know where lots of pokestops will be.
You don’t need to buy pokeballs. They fall like rain from pokestops.
Indeed. A quick drive after work last night and I was 40 pokeballs and 4 eggs in front.
Defender bonuses net you a steady stream of coin, and you get them for gyms you contribute to, not just gyms you capture, so they’re not hard to get if you’re playing regularly. The microtransactions really are pretty avoidable.
At least, they’re avoidable until they start selling new clothes. Then I’m going to need a second job.
That seems like a pretty decent cash-shop as it either allows you to play the game unhindered if you’re able to walk around, or buy lures and pokeballs if you are stuck somewhere and wish to play.
The only item that looks like it “needs” to be bought is the Egg Incubator, but pretty sure you can still enjoy the game without going down the breeding path…
You get one incubator with unlimited uses for free. But you can only store one egg at a time in it.
Ahh, thanks for the info.
That said in the time it took me to walk the 5ks to hatch that first egg I got nine more…
Because you get a lot more XP for catching ‘new’ pokemon. I’d recommend buying 1x Lucky Egg off the bat, combining it with one of the free incense you are given, and go for a 30 minute walk. You’ll skip the first 5 or so levels, get stronger pokemon and be able to get straight into gyms etc.