Tokyo, Jul 14 (IANS): Shares of Japanese video games giant Nintendo soared on Thursday by 16 per cent at the Tokyo Stock Exchange due to the stupendous success of its new smartphone augmented reality game, 'Pokemon Go'.

The shares of the Kyoto-based company reached $244 during the first half of the trading day at the Tokyo exchange where investors appeared to enthusiastically receive the overwhelming figures, a few days after launch of the game in the US, EFE news reported.

Data analysis company SurveyMonkey revealed on Wednesday that Pokemon Go is the most successful mobile-based app in US' history with some 21 million daily active users in 24 hours, exceeding the successes of 'Draw Something' and 'Candy Crush', with some 16 and 20 million users respectively.

According to another analyst firm SensorTower, mobile users spend more time playing Pokemon than on Facebook.

Since its launch on Wednesday, Pokemon Go has been the most downloaded app on different platforms in the US.

Many users are trying all kinds of tricks to download the app as it is not yet available in all countries worldwide.

The figures are especially astounding as the game, developed by Niantic Inc. and distributed by Nintendo, is only available at the moment in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Germany, but other countries were expected to follow soon.