When the Pokémon Global Link website launched in Japan in September of 2010, the site had to close and delay its reopening due to overwhelming Internet traffic. Once again, the Pokémon Global Link website launch is being delayed, this time for languages other than Japanese due to the earthquake and tsumani that devastated parts of Japan last week. The official Pokémon Global Link website has posted the following notice regarding the scheduling change:

"Pokémon Global Link was scheduled to launch on March 30, 2011. As a result of the earthquake in Japan and the need to conserve energy resources, the launch date has been temporarily delayed. When a new launch date is determined, it will be published here on the Pokémon Global Link. We apologize sincerely for any inconvenience caused by this delay."

Source: http://www.pokemon-gl.com/pre/en.html

My personal opinion on this one is that Nintendo/PUSA are really using the disaster in Japan as a stalling tactic. Under no circumstances should the launch of the site be so heavily dependent on servers in Japan. There should be servers for the countries they are making the game available in to reduce ping times for the service in general. The Japanese launch of the system was a complete disaster and they should have known that from the pre-orders alone there was going to be millions of players that potentially would be using the service. Obviously they didn't learn the lesson from a few months ago and they are trying to cover themselves with this disaster as their cover story.

Well, if that's really the case, at least they're not launching the website while knowing it won't be to handle the huge traffic it's going to generate. Indeed, the Japanese launch was a fiasco due to a lack of planning and unrealistic expectations about the website's success. Personally, I'm glad they're taking their time to make sure everything works properly this time.

Though, I admit I'm surprised about the servers being located in Japan. But do the 'we have to reserve energy sources' only apply to servers? Apparently, things have been pretty messed up for companies in the past few days, as a result of the earthquakes. But if that's the case, I'm even surprised as to why they don't have US staff to work on the website (I understand if they don't have any european one, besides the localisation team, but no US staff?).

Well, hopefully, the site won't go down when it's launched, stalling tactic or not.