Pokémon Company Announces New Game in Japan for iOS and Android

The Pokémon Company is working on a new game, this time for smartphones. Pokémon Co-Master seems like a kind of digital board game and is currently only available in Japan. The game comes out for iOS and Android.

Co-Master will be free to play and will use microtransactions as a revenue model. Furthermore, the game will support online multiplayer, probably to be able to play games of the board game against others. The game will be released in Japan in the spring. It is not yet known if and when the game will be released to the rest of the world.

The game is being developed by Heroz, best known in Japan for creating artificial intelligence that can beat players in Japanese chess. As such, Co-Master seems to be a combination of the classic Pokémon gameplay, such as catching and training the creatures, and the strategy of board games such as Japanese chess.

The Pokémon Company has not yet disclosed many details. The move is separate from Nintendo’s decision to focus on the mobile market. Although Pokémon games are almost exclusively released for Nintendo devices, there are more initiatives for Pokémon games on other platforms. For example, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game in which players can encounter the creatures in the real world. A closed beta for this will take place in Japan later this month.

Whether the game will be completely separate from Nintendo is unknown. The characters in the game seem to resemble the Amiibo figures of which the publisher and console maker has sold a lot. In February, it was announced that the new games Pokémon Sun and Moon are coming to Nintendo 3DS.