Pokemon Go.jpg

Pokémon Go is coming this year, though The Pokémon Company, Nintendo and developer Niantic have largely stuck with fancy concept CG commercials to date. The realities of the reveal trailer's pitch and the app itself will, naturally, be different, but the core idea of augmented reality (AR) gaming to catch 'mon in the 'real world' has certainly excited many.

Now off-screen footage has emerged (via Eric F on YouTube) which shows a segment of Niantic's AR talk at SXSW - the high profile public event was effectively called off, but a talk clearly went ahead without being live streamed online.

As you can see below, the footage shows the basic process of seeing a grass-type Ivysaur over an actual grass background, before catching it by tossing Pokéballs; different environments will yield different 'mon. There's also a brief glance at the overworld, which looks heavily inspired by a Google Maps style.

There's been huge interest around the app so far - over one million views on this video alone and months of sustained traffic in Google searches about the game, for example. It certainly has the potential to be a huge success.

Do you like what you see in this brief glimpse?

[source eurogamer.net]