Pokemon has been one of the most recognizable brands on the planet for over two decades, but its profile somehow got even higher when Pokemon Go took the world by storm in 2016. Since that summer, The Pokemon Company has been pumping out Pokemon games, apps, services, and hardware at a brisk pace, but based on the company’s press conference on Wednesday in Japan, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Although a few additional announcements were scattered in between, there were four major reveals during the press conference on Wednesday morning. We’ll run through all of them below, but they include new mobile games, a new Switch game, new services, and new hardware to take advantage of those services.
First up, Nintendo revealed that the original Detective Pikachu game for the 3DS (which was the inspiration for the live-action movie) will be getting a sequel on Switch. The first game ended with a cliffhanger, so if you want to know how the story ends, you’ll have to pick up the Switch game when it eventually arrives on Switch.
The next announcement will be a welcome one for players who dabble in multiple Pokemon games across platforms. Pokemon HOME is a new cloud service that is compatible with Switch, iOS, and Android devices to let you move your Pokemon between games, including Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, and Pokemon Go. You can also trade with others in Pokemon HOME, which will launch in 2020.
By far the strangest announcement of the press conference, Pokemon Sleep is a new app that tracks your time sleeping and… rewards you for getting a good night’s sleep? It’s still not totally clear how the app works, but we do know that The Pokemon Company is teaming up with Niantic and Nintendo for this app. Plus, in addition to the app, The Pokemon Company also announced a new device called the Pokémon Go Plus +, which works the same as a Pokemon Go Plus during the day, but tracks your sleep at night, sending sleep information to your smartphone via Bluetooth. No specific release dates yet, but Pokemon Sleep launches in 2020 as well.
Finally, The Pokemon Company unveiled a new mobile game called Pokemon Masters, which brings together all of the iconic Pokemon trainers from throughout the history of the main series RPGs. From the glimpse of gameplay we got, this appears to be the most traditional Pokemon game revealed at the press conference.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print from the Pokemon 2019 press conference, but we won’t have to wait long for more Pokemon news, as a Pokemon Sword and Shield Direct is coming on Wednesday, June 5th.
