The Pokemon Company Announces Pokemon Go

Yesterday, at a press event in Tokyo, The Pokemon Company announced a new mobile game in the Pokemon franchise: Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Go is an "augmented reality" game which allows players to "catch" Pokemon in their real world surroundings.

While few details are currently available, the game seems to intend to utilize the player's current location to "spawn" Pokemon in various locations nearby. The player can then travel to these real world locations in an effort to catch, using their smartphone, their favorite Pokemon.

In addition to the mobile app, the game will support an optional peripheral known as Pokemon Go Plus. This wearable add on will utilize a Bluetooth connection with the player's smartphone to alert them when in-game actions are available, such as wild Pokemon appearing nearby.

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, during the press event, likened the game to Pokemon Snap. While this could prove an interesting experience in and of itself, I feel that the concept shows a lot of potential. Especially if the game were to incorporate catching, training, battling, and real world gym battles.

Pokemon Go is being developed by Niantic, a startup out of San Francisco, and is slated for an iOS and Android release in 2016.

 

If this turns out to be good, it'll be the only reason I'd ever consider getting a smartphone for.

But I'm going to contain myself until I see some legit gameplay footage. But this definitely has my interest.

 

All this time I thought the company was Game Freak, so I've misread all the credits from the last 6 or so Pokémon games I've bought at the start of the game. I probably need to go back and check the credits to see all the actual companies involved, besides Nintendo and Game Freak.

I've already got a smartphone, but I'll probably need more game specification details to justify upgrading the smartphone or not. I'm betting that a Galaxy S3 will not be supported (not officially at least), judging by the estimated release year. Also, it sounds like the game will be more or less for those who actually can travel more than just within city limits or even state/territory lines. This may be targeting those who can travel to other countries. If that's the case, it will turn out to be quite intensive on the wallet for those who are serious about a "real-life" Pokemon gaming experience and many fans will likely lose out on a lot of features.

Personally, I hope that they're not focusing too much on traveling to catch certain Pokémon and instead that each "spawn point" (whether random or set) has a random Pokémon in it from the 721 (current as of Pokémon X/Y; 6th Generation) and not just a small selection of species that could possibly show up, so even the fans who are stuck to maybe a county-wide range can still get a similar experience as those who are capable of traveling the world. The day/night specifics might be interesting and plausible like Gold/Silver and all generations after that, but (again) traveling the world might not be viable for many of the fans. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this.

 

Reminds me of this:

Spoiler

 

XD