Remember that April Fools' joke when Google allowed you to scour their map for Pokemon to catch, and then even awarded players with a certificate? It looks like that was just the blueprints of something much, much bigger.
Pokemon GO is a mobile game coming to smartphones in 2016, developed by the team behind the popular AR title, Ingress. Pokemon GO will seemingly be a similar experience where players will use real life locations to capture wild Pokemon, and then battle other players.
“Our challenge was to develop a great game for smart phone devices that expressed the core values of Pokémon,” said Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokémon Company. “Pokémon GO is the answer to that challenge.”
“Pokémon 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 Pokémon 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.”
The trailer is, of course, a fantastical look at the core ideas of the game, but it illustrates the vision pretty clearly. Players will be able to find various Pokemon in real-life locations, capture, trade and even battle other players. The trailer also showcases an extra peripheral called Pokemon GO Plus, which is a bracelet that will connect to your phone via bluetooth, and will flash and vibrate when an even or Pokemon are nearby. However, no price was given for this peripheral.
But not all battles will be against others. The ending of the trailer also showcases public events which will have everyone teaming up to battle one, extremely powerful Pokemon.
The game will also support in-app purchases, as the press release mentioned, which has us slightly worried, especially since this game will also entice a younger crowd. This could potentially be quite a money sink.
The prospect of the game is extremely enticing, and as a big Pokemon fan myself, I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this game shapes up. However, we'll have to wait a bit longer as there is no specific date, just the year 2016.
