Pokemon Go brings the Pocket Monsters to non-Nintendo mobile platforms in a big way next year when Nintendo & Niantic team up for an Augmented Reality masterpiece-in-the-making. This will be HUGE. In addition to the free game which uses Augmented Reality to put Pokemon into the real-world around you, a physical “Pokemon Go Plus” wrist device you can wear, will alert you to nearby Pokemon in your real-world location. AWESOME! The Pokemon Go closed beta will begin this December 2015.
Check out the debut computer-generated & live-action Pokemon Go trailer.
The Pokemon Company, Niantic and Nintendo today announced their collaboration on a new project for mobile devices called Pokemon GO. This ground breaking mobile game will encourage fans to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokemon. Pokemon GO will be available for download at no charge on the App Store and Google Play in 2016.
In the past, the Pokemon video game series has used real world locations like the Hokkaido and Kanto regions of Japan, as well as New York and Paris, as inspiration for its fantasy settings.
In Pokemon GO, players will be able to catch, trade, and battle in the real world by utilizing location information.
Pokemon GO’s gameplay experience goes beyond what appears on screen as players explore their neighborhoods, communities and the world they live in to discover Pokemon alongside friends and other players.
Here is a discussion of Pokemon Go & what fans can expect.
Junichi Masuda, game director of the Pokemon video game series at Game Freak, will be contributing to the project. His involvement will ensure that the fun of Pokemon makes its way into Pokemon GO, while developing new types of gameplay and thinking of ways to connect this project with the main series of Pokemon video games. In-app purchases will be available in Pokemon GO.
“Our challenge was to develop a great game for smart phone devices that expressed the core values of Pokemon,” said Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokemon Company. “Pokemon GO is the answer to that challenge.”
“Pokemon GO is a wonderful combination of Niantic’s real world gaming platform and one of the most beloved franchises in popular culture,” said John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, Inc. “Our partnership with The Pokemon Company and Nintendo is an exciting step forward in real-world gaming and using technology to help players discover the world and people around them.”
Here’s more discussion on Pokemon Go.
Players will be able to enhance their Pokemon GO experience even when they are looking away from their smartphones by using a unique device called Pokemon GO Plus. By pressing a button on Pokemon GO Plus, simple in-game actions like catching a Pokemon can be performed.
Developed and manufactured by Nintendo, Pokemon GO Plus will connect to smartphones via Bluetooth and by flashing and vibrating, will notify players about events like the appearance of a Pokemon nearby.
Pokemon GO is being developed by Niantic, Inc. Originally founded by Google Earth co-creator John Hanke as a start-up within Google, Niantic is known for creating Ingress, the augmented reality mobile game which utilizes GPS technology to fuel a sci-fi story encompassing the entire world. Ingress currently has 12 million downloads worldwide.
Check out the Japanese Pokemon Go Press Conference where the game was announced.
POKEMON GO will be the biggest Augmented Reality GPS App/Game ever-released, mark my words!
Pokemon is quite literally the perfect franchise for these type of Augmented Reality games, of which I don’t know a single actual soul who has played one…
But Niantic Labs, a former internal Google startup company, has released three Augmented Reality games already, including 2012’s “Field Trip”, 2013’s “Ingress” and 2014’s “Endgame: Ancient Truth” & “Endgame: Proving Ground” (released alongside a novel called “Endgame: The Calling” by James Frey). And “Ingress” alone has been downloaded over 20 million times which is no mean feat.
Of course, these games are free to download, so whether a person continues to play is another question. But I can guarantee that Pokemon Go will double or triple (Quadruple? Even?) that number.
Pokemon is HUGE and this is the first time Nintendo has released a major project like this on a non-Nintendo platform. And unlike the iOS/Android title “Pokemon Shuffle Mobile”, a puzzle game, Pokemon Go is MUCH MUCH closer to being the real-deal.
It will also be extremely interesting to see how Pokemon Go gets integrated with the next upcoming Core Pokemon title. Which will likely be the Special Edition version of Pokemon X & Y, unless Nintendo decides to simply dive into the next-generation proper, which is possible considering the huge sales of X & Y, which have sold 13 million copies so far, becoming the best-selling 3DS games yet.
It’s worth noting that Satoru Iwata himself dreamed up Pokemon Go two years ago along with “Tsunekazu Ishihara” of “The Pokemon Company”, thus the Pokemon Go Japanese announcement press conference (which Shigeru Miyamoto attended in person) was dedicated to Satoru Iwata, who died on July 11th, 2015.
I’ve never played an Augmented Reality mobile game before, but definitely planning on it with Pokemon Go! It looks awesome!
Are you excited about Pokemon Go and do you plan on playing?