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The Pokémon Go Plus bracelet is great for grinding
My Pokémon Go survival kit keeps growing. It started simply enough, with just my iPhone 6 Plus happily running Pokémon Go, but it quickly became apparent that I would need backup battery power in order to comfortably catch digital monsters for extended periods of time. After all, this is a game that takes players away from their outlets and into the great wilds of the real world, so I shoved a portable power pack and cable into my purse. I happen to live in Arizona, so I soon added an icy water bottle to the mix. Now, with the launch of Pokémon Go Plus, my kit also includes a lanyard bracelet, a plastic vibrating teardrop painted like a Poké Ball and a tiny screwdriver. I'm starting to suspect Ash Ketchum was hiding more than hair under his iconic hat.
$35 Pokémon Go Plus accessory will go on sale September 16th
Pokémon Go players will have their choice of accessories soon, since the Pokémon Go Plus accessory will be available September 16th "in most countries." Earlier today the game's makers reported over 500 million downloads and announced a way to play using the Apple Watch. Now, Niantic says this $35 device will make playing possible "without having to look at your screen all the time." It links to your phone with Bluetooth Low Energy, letting players collect items from nearby Pokéstops or catch Pokémon with the press of a button.
Nintendo's lack of breakthrough games hit profits hard (update)
Despite Nintendo's attempts to lower expectations ahead of announcing its financial results, its latest quarterly earnings aren't good. At all. Net sales are down 31 percent compared to the same quarter last year, down to 62 billion yen ($587 million). Meanwhile, it saw an operating loss of 5.1 billion yen (roughly $48 million). Nintendo managed to sell 220,000 Wii Us, nudging the total number of consoles sold over 13 million, while the aging 3DS notched another million sales. Despite the company owning parts of Pokémon Go, it isn't reflected in the earnings, as the game was released after the quarter that ended in June. However, the company took to Twitter to announce that its curious Pokémon Go Plus accessory has been delayed two months until September.
'Pokémon Go' uses your phone for real-life Mewtwo hunting
We've seen Pokémon in VR before, but how about getting them about and playing with them in the real world? That's what Pokémon Go wants to achieve. It's a collaboration between Niantic Labs (the folks behind the GPS-based Ingress) and The Pokémon Company. From what we can tell, it's going to use Niantic's location-based backend to have you catching, fighting and trading the pocket monsters in the streets around you. Of course, there's a wearable involved dubbed the Pokémon Go Plus too. It's a Bluetooth device from Nintendo that's shaped like one of the series' Pokéballs (capture-gizmos that store monsters after defeating them) that pairs with both Android and iOS to flash and vibrate, giving you alerts when something is happening in the game in your vicinity. It goes a bit further than that though, and you can even use the Go Plus to capture a monster with it.
