On May 16, Pokémon Go beta testing officially kicked off in the United States following earlier field testing taking place in Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Recently, a second round of beta testing has been announced with another wave of invites for testers being sent out already.
Niantic noted, however, that first-round beta testers are barred from participating in the second round. The selection process for testers start with registration last month. Few lucky fans are then randomly chosen from a list of gamers who signed up for the tests.
Per Neurogadget report, qualified applicants would need to provide an email address, preferably a Gmail address. They must also own either an iPhone or an Android mobile handset. The applicants would also be asked if they have previous experience playing Niantic's other game Ingress. Supposed they did, they would be further asked the level they reached in the game.
Niantic then sends a copy of Pokémon GO to chosen testers so they can observe the gameplay. Beta gamers would then have to send back a feedback report detailing which segments of the game ought to be maintained, edited, or entirely removed. Additionally, gamers would need to offer suggestions to developers on how make the game a little better prior to official launching. Lastly, Niantic also remind beta field testers not share leaks and retain confidentiality. But as we have seen in the past few months, the crackdown failed to deter leaks from surfacing.
Meanwhile, there are reports of Niantic's email invite contain a small typographical error in the URL the company sent to users. The single-letter error appears to have prevented testers from getting into the Pokémon GO field test app,Nintendo News reported. As per report, the error refers to the extra letter 'C' added in the link:
1. https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.nianticlabsc.pokemongo/join (incorrect)
2. https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.nianticlabs.pokemongo/join (correct)
So far, Niantic is addressing the issue by re-sending the invite with the correct link to the game. For more details surrounding the AR mobile game, Nintendo announced that a 'Pokémon Go' Q&A event will be held at E3 this year on June 15 per Tech Advisor.
