Pokémon Are Living Near You Right Now In Pokémon Go

With the announcement of Pokemon Go, Nintendo showed a massive push not only into the mobile gaming market, but into the Augmented Reality one as well. As for the first time, people will literally be able to go out into the world and catch Pokemon in real time. In fact, as John Hanke of Niantic Labs notes, there are Pokemon really close to you right now. As he tells VentureBeat:

“Our goal is to make it so you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon. It may not be the most rare Pokémon in the world, but there’ll be a population of Pokémon living near all our players. Gyms will be a bit more rare. You want to find gyms so you can level up your Pokémon and battle there, so it will take a little more effort to get there.”

Also, like the Pokemon games themselves, the types of Pokemon you find in your areas will be based of the Pokemon type:

“Pokémon will live in different parts of the world depending on what type of Pokémon they are. Water Pokémon will live near the water. It may be that certain Pokémon will only exist in certain parts of the world. Very rare Pokémon may exist in very few places. But you can trade.”

This seems to state that Pokemon fans will get a true Pokemon like experience via Pokemon Go, an intriguing notion. Pokemon Go is set to release in 2016, though no definitive release date has been given as of yet.