This new game is like ‘Pokemon Go’ except instead of walking, you just sleep
There are hundreds of Pokémon across the many video game installments the series has seen since Pokémon Red and Blue debuted in 1996. How are you expected to "catch 'em all" when there just aren't enough hours in the day? Easy. You aren't. But in 2020, you'll be able to catch the wily monsters while you snooze away, with the upcoming new Pokémon Sleep game – and a whole host of other cool Pokémon games and apps.
Pokemon Sleep was just one of several announcements made during a special Pokemon 2019 Press Conference, which was live-streamed on Twitch on the evening of Tuesday, May 28. During the conference, coming straight to fans from Tokyo, Japan, The Pokemon Company revealed quite a few interesting developments.
Pokémon Sleep is exactly what its name implies: a game that's "played" while you sleep. Created with the idea of "transforming sleep into entertainment," Pokémon Sleep will monitor users' sleep patterns and then reward them for a good night's sleep.
“The concept of this game is for players to look forward to waking up every morning,” said Tsunekazu Ishihara, The Pokémon Company president and CEO. To make this a reality, it will utilize a new device from the developers of the massively popular Pokémon Go app, the Pokémon Go Plus Plus. It resembles a Poké Ball, or the device trainers usually store their Pokémon in, though it's flat instead of globular.
It can be used to capture Pokémon on the go in the mobile app, but also track sleep patterns thanks to its built-in accelerometer. It will track "simple information" about how long you sleep and transfer it in turn to the Pokémon Sleep app. Of course, details on how players will actually be able to capture monsters in their sleep haven't been released just yet. It's likely data will simply go toward some type of "point" system or something similar, but that surely won't stop people from trying to figure it out ahead of time.
Both the app and peripheral are meant to debut in 2020, but no further additional details were on offer during the presentation.
But that's not all. In keeping up with the popularity of the live-action movie, the Detective Pikachu video game for Nintendo 3DS was confirmed to be getting a sequel, though this version would be coming to the Nintendo Switch instead. Though there wasn't much fanfare surrounding the announcement, The Pokemon Company did confirm that it would expand on the "cliffhanger" ending from the original game. It's unclear if it will continue right where the previous title left off, or if it will be a new adventure for Detective Pikachu entirely.
The presentation wasn't all about games that require peripherals, though. There was another mentioned during the stream as well. Pokémon Masters is the newest upcoming entry in the universe of Pokémon apps, and it's borne of a partnership between The Pokémon Company and mobile game publisher DeNA. It's a colorful, magical adventure meant to reunite players with some of their favorite trainer characters from throughout the entirety of the series, like Misty and Brock, fan-favorite characters who acted as important companions in the Pokémon anime.
It looks like players can partner up with their favorite trainers, collect Pokémon to train and attack with, and earn additional moves and Pokémon as the game wears on. The app was only showcased quite briefly, so there weren't many details to be gleaned from the presentation. It's targeting a 2019 release on the App Store and Google Play Store later this year, however, with no set date in sight just yet.
Finally, Pokémon Home is a new cloud-based storage system that will allow players to transfer all their favorite Pokémon from other devices to one central location. It's an improvement on the older Nintendo 3DS feature, the Pokémon Bank, which had one frustrating downside: it only let users store Pokémon on their console locally.
Pokémon Home will instead let players store the monsters in the cloud to trade with others and transfer out from one location to another. Pokémon will be transferable from Pokémon Go, Pokémon Bank, Let's Go, Pikachu, Let's Go, Eevee! and the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield, which is set to debut later this year on Nintendo Switch.
There is a catch, though. Pokémon will only be able to move to Pokémon Sword and Shield from Pokémon Home, and not back and forth across all games. This is likely in an attempt to keep issues from cropping up between the older-generation Pokémon games, which won't feature many of the new monsters. Pokémon Home will cost $4.99 a year to use, but there may be subscription plan available in the future. It's targeting an early 2020 release.
These aren't even the biggest tidbits of Pokémon news to come. On July 5, Nintendo will be streaming a special presentation detailing what fans can expect out of the upcoming Nintendo Switch entries, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Set to bring players to an entirely new world rife with too many new Pokémon to count, these games will be the first new core entries in the Pokémon series on the Switch.
It's a great time to be a Pokémon fan – and with the ability to catch 'em all in your sleep soon, you'll be able to eat, sleep, and breathe Pokémon. Not such a bad world, huh?