The Pokemon Company announced this week a number of new titles it's releasing, as well as a new cloud save platform that will link progress across consoles.
The most curious announcement they had though, was a health initiative they're starting.
The company is trying to gamify sleep, in the hopes it can convince kids to adopt healthy sleeping habits.
Niantic CEO John Hanke, the developers of the AR smartphone game Pokemon GO, took the stage at the press conference with a vague announcement along the same lines as well. "At Niantic, we love exploring the world on foot,"he said. "And that can't happen unless we have the energy to embark on these adventures. We're excited to find ways to reward good sleep habits in Pok¨¦mon GO as part of a healthy lifestyle. You'll be hearing more from us on this in the future."
Pokemon Company Tsunekazu Ishihara announced that they're launching a new game called Pokemon SLEEP. There aren't a lot of details regarding what it will entail however, but it currently has a logo and a release date for sometime in 2020.
It'll involve a new wearable called the Pokemon GO+ Plus (yes, that's two pluses). I will act as a wearable companion to the game Pokemon GO, where you can use it to "store" a Pokemon as you walk around to level it up, as well as to interact with Pokestops or catch nearby critters. It will also however act as a sleep tracker, which will sync to your phone via Bluetooth.
Ideally, it would probably mean in-game bonuses for players that get a good night's rest, but we'll have to wait a little longer for more details. And yet, it already looks like promising alternative to promote healthy gaming, instead of outright banning games as we've done.
Gaming addiction and smartphone addiction in general is something people the world over gave been paying more attention to lately. It's most certainly a real thing, but the key to fixing it is in managing it at the ground level, not dictating how general consumers use it.