Pokémon

Pokémon (ポケモン, Pokemon, /ˈpoʊkeɪˌmɒn/ POH-kay-mon) is a media franchise owned by The Pokémon Company, and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995. It is centered on fictional creatures called "Pokémon", which humans known as Pokémon Trainers catch and train to battle each other for sport.

The franchise began as a pair of video games for the original Game Boy, developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo. The franchise now spans video games, trading card games, animated television shows and movies, comic books, and toys. Pokémon is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise.

The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006. Cumulative sales of the video games (including home console games, such as Hey You, Pikachu! for the Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies. In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. Pokémon USA Inc. (now The Pokémon Company International), a subsidiary of Japan's Pokémon Co., now oversees all Pokémon licensing outside of Asia. As of 2013, the Pokémon media franchise has grossed revenues of ¥4 trillion worldwide (equivalent to US$37.76 billion). The brand earned $2 billion in 2014 alone.

Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is an upcoming augmented reality game for mobile phones developed by Niantic, scheduled to be released in 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game will be released alongside the Pokémon Go Plus, a small wearable device developed by Nintendo, which uses a Bluetooth connection to notify users when a Pokémon is nearby with a LED and a light rumble. The game will allow players to capture, battle, train and trade virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world. The game will be free-to-play, although it will support in-app purchases.

The idea for the game was conceived in 2013 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company. In 2015, Ishihara dedicated his speech at the game's announcement on September 10 to Iwata, who died two months earlier. Ishihara and his wife had played Ingress. Different Pokémon will live in different areas of the world - for example, water type Pokémon will live near water. There will be events held where players can trade Pokémon to build up their collection. A wristband device called the "Pokémon Go Plus" will ship with the game, to allow a more "heads-up" gaming experience than Ingress, where the player can be alerted to a nearby Pokémon by the Go Plus vibrating, press the button in a coded sequence to capture it and check the app later to find out what they've captured. The decision to create the Go Plus rather than create a smart watch app was to increase uptake among players for whom a smart watch is prohibitively expensive.