The Pokémon Company announced four new Pokémon projects during the 2019 Pokémon Press Conference held in Tokyo.
The first announcement was the reveal of a new Pokémon game for the Nintendo Switch. This month saw the release of the live-action movie, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, the story of which was based loosely on the plot of the 3DS game released in 2016, also called Detective Pikachu. At the press conference, it was announced that a sequel for this game was in development and would be releasing on the Nintendo Switch. No gameplay or release dates were shown at the conference.
The second announcement was Pokémon Home. Pokémon Home is a cloud-based Pokémon storage service for smartphones and the Nintendo Switch. The service will let Trainers bring Pokémon from Pokémon Bank, Pokémon GO, and Pokémon Let’s Go, as well as the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield. Along with trading with people using your smartphone, the company states they hope to eventually let players use the service to do trades between a group of people. The service will launch in early 2020.
The biggest announcement of the conference was the reveal of Pokémon Sleep. Pokémon Sleep is an initiative to “transform sleeping into entertainment.” It is being developed in part with Select Button, the developers in charge of the Pokémon Magikarp Jump app, and will use time spent sleeping to affect gameplay. The company said they wanted to give Trainers “something to look forward to in waking up.” The program can track your sleeping using the newly-announced Pokémon GO Plus Plus. Trainers can put this device next to their pillow while they sleep as it tracks sleep info using an accelerator. As the name suggests, the device also works with Pokémon GO as a GO plus, tracking kilometers walked and location in Pokémon GO, as well as letting Trainers spin Poké Stops and capture Pokémon. Pokémon Sleep is slated to launch in 2020.
The final announcement showcased the collaboration project between mobile game developer DeNA and the Pokémon Company, revealed to be titled Pokémon Masters. This app was based off an idea from Pokémon artist Ken Sugimori and features the Pokémon Trainers from the video games, along with their partner Pokémon. Some of the Trainers included in the footage included Brock, Misty, Blue, and Cynthia. The gameplay showed a three-on-three Pokémon battle and claims to let you “battle alongside the Trainers from the main series RPGs,” but not much is known outside of that. The app will be released sometime in 2019.
Although there was no new information on Pokémon Sword and Shield, the series director Junichi Masuda promised that new information on the upcoming Nintendo Switch games would be coming on June 5, 6 a.m. PST during the Pokémon-centric Nintendo Direct.
