The Pokémon Company’s second smartphone game is going to bring your favorite pocket monsters to the real world for the first time.
Pokémon GO, which is coming to Android and iOS in 2016, is a location-based game that will let you find, fight, and catch Pokémon in the cities, towns, and neighborhoods around you like never before.
Developing in collaboration with Niantic, Pokémon GO uses a real-world gaming platform to bring the best elements of the Pokémon franchise to life. Players will use their smartphone to find Pokémon in the world around them before battling them, catching them, and trading them with friends.
To enhance the Pokémon GO experience, players will be able to pair their smartphone with the Pokémon GO Plus, a button device that can be used to perform simple, in-game actions, such as catching a Pokémon.
The Pokémon Company has teamed up with Game Freak, the studio that helped create the original Pokémon games for Game Boy and every other title spawned out of the franchise ever since, and Niantic, the company behind the augmented reality game Ingress, to create Pokémon GO.
John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, promises the game will be “a wonderful combination of Niantic’s real world gaming platform and one of the most beloved franchises in popular culture.”
The bad news is we’ll have to wait until next year to get our hands on Pokémon GO. Here’s to hoping it’ll be worth the wait.
