Pokémon has been one of the driving forces behind the success of Nintendo’s handheld consoles, but those devices have been suffering in recent years due to the rise of smartphones and tablets. It definitely doesn’t help that Pokémon and other Nintendo titles are actually really easy to pirate and play on a smartphone using emulators, and Nintendo’s efforts to prevent people from doing this haven’t been successful. Now it looks like Nintendo is finally fed up with fighting the market changes, and will be officially bringing Pokémon to Android and iOS sometime next year.
The next Pokémon game is coming to Android and iOS in 2016 thanks to a collaboration between Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and Niantic, the developer of popular augmented-reality game Ingress. Pokémon Go, as the game will be called, is heavily inspired by Ingress’ massively multiplayer location-based gameplay. According to The Pokémon Company’s president, Tsunekazu Ishihara, Pokémon Go is also location-based, giving players the ability to capture, track, train and battle Pokémon in the real world. Not much about Pokémon Go’s gameplay has been revealed so far, aside from the fact that players will need to track down Pokémon in real-world locations such as streets, parks and landmarks. What has been revealed is a companion device for the game called Pokémon Go Plus. The device is essentially a Bluetooth wrist strap with a Poké Ball-styled location marker attached to it. The marker either lights up or vibrates to let players know something is happening in the game, like when a Pokémon is nearby and able to be captured.
