Whereas Pokémon GO incorporates elements that make walking fun, it appears The Pokémon Company wants to make another boring activity less boring — sleeping.
Its new game, aptly called Pokémon Sleep, turns one's slumber into entertainment. Here, a person's sleep length and patterns will impact gameplay.
Pokémon Sleep
The goal, it says, is to give players a reason to look forward to waking up in the morning, much like how Pokémon GO makes walking less dreadful.
In line with this new title, the company has partnered with Nintendo on a new sleep tracking device called the Pokémon GO Plus + that will connect to the hit augmented reality game, which will apparently receive updates centered on sleep and rest. Players will have to put this tracking device next to them as they sleep. It will then send information to the user's phone via Bluetooth, and in turn affect in-game elements. This sounds a lot similar to the Quality of Life device that Nintendo was working on years ago, before the Nintendo Switch found worldwide access, which has since been shelved.
Beyond that, there's not a lot of details about Pokémon Sleep at the moment, but it's confirmed to be coming out in 2020.
"In 2016, Pokémon GO turned the simple act of walking into entertainment, making the entire world into a game," the official Pokémon twitter account said. "We're about to do it again, Trainers — this time, for sleeping."
Although precious little detail is available, Snorlax is available for a limited time on Pokémon GO in celebration of the new game's announcement, so better snap this opportunity quickly, trainers.
Pokémon Sleep is being developed by Select Button, the same company responsible for Pokémon: Magikarp Jump, another one of the few Pokémon titles available for mobile. It didn't become a worldwide phenomenon as its Pokémon GO sibling, obviously. Even still, it's good to know The Pokémon Company resumes its pursuit of the mobile space.
Pokémon Home
Apart from Pokémon Sleep, the company also revealed Pokémon Home, a cloud service where users can store all their caught monsters in. This will launch in 2020 for iOS, Android, and Switch, and integrate to a wide range of other Pokémon titles, including Pokémon GO, Pokémon: Let's Go, and forthcoming Sword and Shield mainline entries, and the previous cloud service for 3DS, Pokémon Bank. Players will not only be able to use it to gather all their Pokémon in one place, but manage and trade them with other players as well.
