Pokémon Go

As many of you likely remember, a location based multiplayer game called Pokémon Go was announced earlier this year for smart devices. The game will aim to place virtual Pokémon in the world around you, and place you in the shoes of an aspiring Pokémon Trainer. You'll be able to catch, trade, and battle Pokémon just like in the main series games, all in real time. The game is due out sometime in 2016, and GamesBeat recently sat down with John Hanke and Mike Quigley – the CEO and Chief Marketing Officer of Niantic, respectively – to talk a bit about the upcoming AR game.

In terms of how the game came about, it was driven largely by Tsunekazu Ishihara - the CEO of The Pokémon Company – and the late Satoru Iwata. Both individuals were focused on making partnerships and on expanding the usage of IP, and Niantic got involved mostly due to how Ishihara is a big fan of Ingress, a similar location based game.

Hanke: It was driven in large part by Mr. Ishihara and the Pokémon Company. They've been involved in developing all the Pokémon games through the years. They guide the IP. But a lot of what they do is through partnerships. They partnered initially with Wizards of the Coast to bring out the Pokémon card game, which has now sold something like 21 billion cards. They have animation partners who do the TV show. They're a partnering type of company. Mr. Ishihara ushered us into the halls at Nintendo.

The former CEO of Nintendo, Mr. Iwata, had his hand on the wheel. He was steering Nintendo in a new direction. Part of that was the partnership with DeNA, the mobile game company. They have new hardware in the pipeline that they've been working on. He saw the need and personally wanted to help evolve Nintendo. They resisted mobile for a long time. But it's clear their relationships with us and with DeNA that they now understand how relevant it is to the future.

Pokémon will be in certain areas according to their types and the kinds of real worlds environments that they'd logically appear in. Trading will be absolutely essential to catching 'em all, and it appears that certain Pokémon won't even appear in certain countries.

Hanke: Pokémon will live in different parts of the world depending on what type of Pokémon they are. Water Pokémon will live near the water. It may be that certain Pokémon will only exist in certain parts of the world. Very rare Pokémon may exist in very few places. But you can trade. If you live in a place with lots of water Pokémon and you come to an event — we have these Ingress events that are getting bigger and bigger. We'll have our biggest weekend ever on Saturday.

We'll have events for Pokémon as well. Those are competitive, but they can also be places to trade stuff with other players. Pokémon trading is going to be huge. You can't get all of them by yourself. If you want all of them you'll have to trade with other players. Or you have to be someone who takes time off work and travels the world for a year. There may be people who do that.

Additionally, it seems that players will be able to join teams that will battle against each other in various events. This concept wasn't elaborated on much, but it'll be largely based on the existent lore of Pokémon.

Hanke: There will be teams to join in Pokémon, more than two. Those teams will compete against one another.

For the full interview, check out the details here.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to Pokémon Go? Do you think the idea of real time asynchronous multiplayer games like this will continue to become more popular? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[source venturebeat.com]