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Catch, trade and battle Pokémon in the real world with Pokémon GO

In an unexpected announcement by gaming giant Nintendo during a NicoNico livestreamThe Pokémon Company revealed a new mobile app called Pokémon GO.

In short: the app seeks to bring the experience of the Pokémon franchise to the world by utilising phones and augmented reality (VR).

Utilising phones’ GPS chips and cameras, players will be able to find nearby Pokémon. Once near enough, they can use the famous Pokéball to capture the creatures.

With possession of their new friends, users can interact with other by trading, battling and partaking in  special events. The event showcased was a group effort to defeat the Legendary Pokémon Mewtwo.

The game won’t be just a simple app install as there’s a small peripheral to accompany it.  Called the “Pokémon Go Plus”, the small Bluetooth device will vibrate when players can perform certain actions.

This move is surprising because Pokémon is the second-most lucrative franchise for Nintendo, and has been doggedly protected over the years and locked away behind the company’s proprietary hardware. In the past the golden rule was: if you want to play Pokémon, you need to buy the latest Nintendo hardware. While there have been certain Pokémon-themed games making their way to app stores, they’ve mostly been puzzle games.

Pokémon GO will be available on iOS and Android in 2016, and we hope there’ll be more information regarding it closer to the time. While it looks to be using many of the main series’ familiar core mechanics, we just don’t know how it will work yet, and the creators and developers of the past Pokémon games, Game Freak, are not at the helm this time around; American developers Niantic will be handling the project.

Fans of the franchise have been desperately clamouring for a Pokémon MMO ever since the very first game was released in Japan 20 years ago. This isn’t surprising as the franchise has always been focused on players interacting with each other, but it has yet to make the jump to a fully-online environment.

While GO doesn’t look to scratch that particular itch (because it seems players will still need to be in close proximity to each other), this is at least a good sign of things to come.

And to save you the question: our favourite Pokémon is Tyrantrum. It’s a T-rex-dragon-Pokémon, your argument is invalid.

[Via – Destructoid]

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