The full, final version of Pokémon GO was released in Australia and New Zealand today. 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 1 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 US dollars):


20 Pokéballs—likely the most common transaction—will run you USD$0.99, 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.



Hopefully the game will be out everywhere else sometime today! And if it’s not, Android users, you know what to do.