Pokemon Masters lands on Android and iOS this summer

Back at the end of May, The Pokemon Company held a press conference in which it announced a number of new products. Unsurprisingly, Pokemon GO and its new companion accessory Pokemon Sleep got a lot of attention during that press conference, but one interesting thing that only had a quick reveal was a new mobile game called Pokemon Masters. At the time, The Pokemon Company didn't go into much depth about the game, but today, it's beginning to pull the veil back just a little more.

For starters, The Pokemon Company delivered a new trailer for Pokemon Masters, though don't expect to see any gameplay in it. No, this trailer – which clocks in at over four minutes long – is entirely animated and it features a number of characters from both the core series Pokemon games and anime. Some notable faces include Brock, Misty, Cheren, Lance, Erika, Red, and Blue.

While the trailer doesn't tell us anything new, a blog post on the official Pokemon website does. In Pokemon Masters, that post explains, we'll make our way to the artificial island of Pasio. "On Pasio, Pokemon and their Trainers – called sync pairs – share a special bond," The Pokemon Company wrote.

As we adventure through Pasio Island, we'll meet and presumably recruit other trainers and their sync Pokemon. Players will be able to form teams of three sync pairs and battle against other teams of trainers in real time, but the blog post stops short of confirming PvP combat outright. It does say that trainers will have their own abilities they can use in addition to those of their Pokemon though, making it sound like trainers will act in the role of support to battling Pokemon.

The post doesn't mention anything about how the game will be monetized, but based on the description, it sounds like this will be a gacha game similar to Dragalia Lost. If that's true, then we'll likely be summoning trainers using premium currency, which would mean that the trainers you recruit would ultimately be random. That's just speculation on my part though, so keep that in mind.

Finally, both the trailer and the Pokemon blog post confirm one key detail: Pokemon Masters will be out sometime this summer for Android and iOS. No specific release date was shared aside from that, but if summer is what Dena and The Pokemon Company are aiming for, then we should be learning more soon.