Two new Pokémon-branded smartphone games will be arriving in 2020, Pokémon Sleep and Pokémon Masters, along with a trading cloud platform launching later this year.
At a Tokyo press conference today, CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara billed Pokémon Sleep as a mobile game where you play by sleeping. Your sleep will affect gameplay, with the company saying that it wants to give players a reason to look forward to waking up in the morning.
Pokémon Sleep is scheduled to release sometime in 2020.
Tying into that, there’s also a new sleep-tracking device in the works, the Pokémon GO+, that will send sleep data to your iPhone through Bluetooth. However, little is known about the accessory other than that it will work with the popular Pokémon GO augmented reality game which will receive gameplay updates designed around sleep and rest.
The Verge notes that Pokémon is also getting a robust new cloud service.
They’re calling it Pokémon Home and it will serve as your centralized place to not only manage but also trade your creatures captured in various games such as “Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!”, “Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!”, “Pokémon GO” and the upcoming “Pokémon Sword” and “Pokémon Shield” games for the Nintendo Switch console.
The service is launching in early 2020 for iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch.
Other announcements include Pokémon Masters, the next mobile game in the series launching later this year. Created in partnership with DeNA, Masters will feature many of the most notable trainers from past Pokémon games. Representing “a new type of Pokémon battling on the go,” the game has been designed “for a casual but uniquely Pokémon experience.”
It’s expected to launch later this year, with more details coming out in June.
Nintendo also showed off an adaptation of the Nintendo 3DS game Detective Pikachu for its own Switch console. There will be a new ending, but that’s all we know so far. And last but not least, Nintendo will be putting on a Direct showcase on June 5 at 9am ET focused on the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield games for the Switch console.