The Pokémon Company has teamed up with Tencent to create a 5-versus-5 mobile multiplayer online battle arena game, titled Pokémon Unite. Available for Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, featuring cross-platform play.

One of the most successful franchises of the video game realm reinvents itself, bringing a gameplay never seen before featuring the Pocket Monsters. The game will allow players to team up and play with their favorite Pokémon in a classic MOBA arena, fighting for turf and attempting to catch other monsters.

The announcement video featured Pokémon like Pikachu, Machamp, Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Gengar, Clefairy, Lucario, Talonflame, and Snorlax. In Pokémon Unite, players will encounter a typical MOBA map, with two main lanes, top and bottom, and a jungle area with a focus in the center.

The main objective is to get the highest score during the designated time on the map. In order to do that, players will engage in team fights, capture wild Pokémon, and focus on objectives.

Tencent holds a stake in almost every major competitive mobile video game out there, including Arena of Valor and now, as announced by Riot Games, Wild Rift. As of right now, the release date is unknown, but our editorial team at Inven Global is already way too excited to try it.

Lara's thoughts:

As someone who grew up playing both Pokémon games and League of Legends, this addition to the mobile games scene seems like a no-brainer. The Pokémon Company has experimented with several different competitive games, like Pokkén Tournament, and PokémonTCG Online.  

For an intellectual property that has such massive cultural power in the gaming scene, the attempts to foster a competitive scene have been very niche, and often underwhelming. As much as this announcement brings a great deal of excitement, it also brings a series of concerns revolving the conservative approach Nintendo has of their games, in which they prefer them to be played for fun, and not so much competitively.

We could have a two-hour conversation about how Japanese officials view games like gambling, and how that absolutely does not help the case of any esports scene that wishes to grow in the nascent sun land... but we can leave that for another time. 

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