Nintendo has announced a new Pokémon game — where players catch the little monsters in real life.
Rather than navigating through the virtual maps of previous Pokémon games, players of Pokémon GO will instead move through their real world, with their phone tracking where they go and offering opportunities to catch Pokémon and take part in battles with people in their own neighbourhood.
In the past, the Pokémon games have used real life locations in New York, Paris and Japan as a basis for the virtual maps.
Pokémon Go will be made in partnership with Niantic, a company that specialises in using computers to make real life, location aware games.
Pokémon GO will be available for free for iOS and Android in 2016. It will generate revenues in part through in-app purchases, letting people buy extras within the game.
A special device called Pokémon GO Plus will also be released, which will pair with smartphones over Bluetooth. That will flash and vibrate to notify people that virtual Pokémon are around, and a button on it will let people catch Pokémon by pressing it.
That company was founded by John Hanke, one of the creators of Google Earth, and is most famous for its Ingress game. That lets people go to real-life locations and take control of them, participating in a huge, sci-fi themed real game of capture the flag.
“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, the head of Niantic, said in a statement. “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.”
Niantic was a part of Google until August, when it was spun out into its own independent company.
