New Pokémon mobile phone "thing" announced :: News

Reported by Psythor on Mon 24 Apr 2006 13:46:50 UTC
Last updated by Psythor on Mon 24 Apr 2006 13:46:50 UTC
Section: Pokémon around the world

SquareEnix, the company behind the Final Fantasy series, are releasing a Pokémon-themed mobile phone messaging client.

This news item is more than 45 days old. Updates are unlikely and newer information may already be available.

IGN are reporting that this "communication tool" allows "chat and messaging", presumably through some sort of mobile phone Java midlet, to users of the Foma 900i phone, for 200 Yen a month.

That's a surprisingly reasonable 95 pence in real money or $1.70 in our economic imperialist's terms. The new service, which is only available in Japan, is not thought to include any deliberately inflammatory political lanuguage.

The interesting thing about this, aside from the licensing out of the Pokémon name for use on a different medium, is the involvement of Pokémon as a communication tool. Sure, the whole Pokémon concept was dreamt up whilst imagining bugs crawling along a Game Boy link cable, but allowing users to communicate freely using a Nintendo brand strikes me as something of a departure for Nintendo.

If you'll allow me to wildly speculate, perhaps the next generation of online Pokémon games (which are almost guarenteed to happen) will allow free communication between users?