The Pokémon Press Conference: All Upcoming Games and Services
- Julius Pavlas
- Jun 1, 2019
- 2 min read
The Pokémon Company held a press conference on Tuesday, May 28 announcing various new games and services.
One of those announcements came in the form of a remake of the first Pokémon movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution.
The conference began with Tsunekazu Ishihara, the President and CEO of the Pokémon Company, announcing that the company intends to deliver more of its content to Chinese audiences. After that, the Managing Director of Toho Co., Ltd., Hiro Matsuoka, announced he would be taking on the role as a member of the board of directors for the Pokémon Company.
Matsuoka also brought attention to the recent theatrical release of Detective Pikachu and the upcoming release of Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution, both of which are distributed by Toho. Ishihara continued on with the announcement of a sequel to the 3DS game, Detective Pikachu, will be coming to the Nintendo Switch, although there was no date given.
The next announcement was of a new Pokémon Center store in the Jewel facility of Changi Airport in Singapore. The president of Pokémon Center Co., Yoriomi Uego, then came on stage to announce that a new Pokémon Center, along with a new Nintendo store, will be built in the new Parco Shopping Center of the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, both opening Fall 2019.
On the gaming side, Ethan Wang, of the Chinese game developer NetEase, will be bringing a Chinese port of Pokémon Quest and other games to follow. The first big announcement to a gamer audience came from Junichi Masuda, the Managing Director of Game Freak, in the form of Pokémon Home.
Pokémon Home will be a cloud-based service where people will be able to port and trade Pokémon from older games, Pokémon Go, Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee and the upcoming Sword/Shield. The service is set for a release in early 2020.
The most idiosyncratic announcement came in the form of Pokémon Sleep, a game you play by… sleeping.
No information was given about this peculiar services asides from a 2020 release.
Kazuhiro Maruyama, a hardware developer of Nintendo, unveiled an enhancement device to the Pokémon Go +, one that can be used with the aforementioned Sleep: the Pokémon Go +… Plus. Speaking of Go, the CEO of Niantic (Go’s developer), John Hanke, announced an abundance of Snorlaxes appearing in Pokémon Go as a promotion for Sleep.
The last game announced was a new mobile game called Pokémon Masters, where you fight with and against all the Gym Leaders and their iconic Pokémon, such as Brock with an Onix and Lance with a Dragonite, among others to be released at some point this year.
The final announcement of the conference was for Pokémon Shirts, a service where you can create a customized dress shirt with various designs of the original 151 Pokémon. Originally only available in Japan and other Asian territories, the service will arrive in America and Europe at a later unannounced date.
No new announcements on the upcoming Sword & Shield, though -- that’s for the upcoming Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, June 4.
For more Pokémon news, keep it here at RED.
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