Incubators in Pokémon Go

Those who have played the main series of Pokémon games for a long time know that Pokémon can be bred to beget eggs, and that hatching these eggs needs the presence of other Pokémon and the movement of the main character across the overworld. Pokémon Go has eggs also, but they are gotten from PokéStops instead, hatched from actual physical walking, and necessary to be put in an incubator, something that is more akin to the process for real eggs of real animals. Like any game mechanism, however, there is also a finer point to the use of incubators.

In Go, there are two types of incubators: infinite-use and limited-use. The latter can only be used for a few eggs, after which they will break and become unusable. The former can be used for many eggs continuously, though there is one and only one. The advantage of using the latter is that it takes some burden off the former by letting multiple eggs be incubated at the same time and allows eggs to hatch quicker, though the disadvantage is that the use is indeed few and there are not a lot of them around... unless you level up and/or buy more of them.

This situation implies some usage scenarios. It has been suggested that the infinite-use incubator be reserved for eggs that only take 2 kilometers of walking to hatch, and inversely the limited-use ones for the 10-kilometer eggs. There is some divisiveness about whether the 5-kilometer eggs are better for one incubator or the other. Personally, I agree that 2-kilometer eggs should only be hatched using the infinite-use incubator and that the limited-use incubators are best for the lengthiest of eggs, but between that, it should be OK to use the infinite-use incubator to aid in, for example, hatching a host of 5-kilometer eggs when they pile up. So the usage of these incubators may be situationally dependent as much as it is dictated by practicality and necessity.

The concept of the incubator is unique, considering that it is incorporated in a Pokémon game, as it delivers a stroke of realism to what is otherwise an imaginary world. Then again, that is probably the exact point of this game: to make this imaginary world come alive and seem as real as possible to those who play it. Thus incubators do make sense given the setting and essence of the game, even with the sensibilities regarding how they are to be used.