Nintendo is working with a team of former Google developers on a new location-based Pokémon game for smartphones.The game will involve going to real world locations while playing on your phone in order to catch Pokémon monsters.
The game will be released in 2016 for ios and android,developed in partnership with The Pokémon Company and Niantic, which as a Google subsidiary made the location-based game Ingress.The game will include in-app purchases, which given Pokémon’s status as a popular children’s game – although it has many adult fans too – could prove controversial.
Nintendo is hoping that the involvement of the Pokémon series’ game director Junichi Masuda will assuage any concern among fans.here is already a freemium Pokémon game available for mobile devices: Pokémon Shuffle, which recently launched for iOS and Android.
The game marks the second mobile games partnership following a deal struck with fellow Japanese company DeNA in May to make a series of games based on its characters and brands.There’ll be a device for Pokémon Go, though. Nintendo is making a gadget called the Pokémon Go Plus that will connect to players’ smartphones using Bluetooth, vibrating and flashing when a Pokémon is (virtually) nearby, so they can press a button to attempt to catch it.
“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,” said the company’s chief executive John Hanke.
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