TOKYO: Pokémon Go made billions of dollars getting people to roam the great outdoors. Now, the company behind the global game phenomenon is trying to get people to go to bed.
Pokémon Sleep records and rewards your sleep with Pokémon that you would otherwise have to spend hours catching.
Developed by Japanese games studio Select Button Inc and published by The Pokemon Co, Pokémon Sleep was the most downloaded game during the week starting July 16, according to mobile data analytics firm data.ai. The game celebrated hitting the milestone of 10 million downloads on Friday by offering some in-game items for free.
Users play by sleeping with their smartphones close to their heads, and the game keeps track of vibrations caught by the phones’ sensors to estimate sleep quality. The better your sleep metrics, the more creatures you collect.
You can also speed things up in the free-to-play game by buying in-app items to befriend more Pokémon, or by paying for a premium subscription that comes with bonus sleep points.
But interest is waning as more users voice boredom about a game whose outcome is determined while the player is asleep. Searches for the title have sunk to about half their peak worldwide, according to Google Trends.
“It’s a lot of fun collecting different Pokémon, but the game does get a little repetitive after a while,” said Reina Watanabe, 22, who started playing three weeks ago.
There’s also plenty of ways to cheat: you can tell the game you’re going to bed when you’re actually curling up with a book, leave the phone on your bed while you get coffee, or just manually enter false sleep data.
Whether Pokémon Sleep can keep users checking in every night depends both on the draw of the characters as well as the perceived health benefits.
Pokemon is exploring ways to link its newest game to more devices in the future, according to the company’s Pokémon Sleep producer Kaname Kosugi. — Bloomberg
