Back in 2016, a wave of Pokémania hit with the massive release of Pokémon Go. Streets were flooded, businesses were booming, and everyone was interacting. Even Hillary Clinton, in a very "hey, fellow teens" moment, asked us all to “Pokémon go to the polls.” And now Pikachu is back to whip more than your walking habits into shape. The company that reinvented walking claims that sleeping is now entertainment.
Pokémon Sleep, a new app that rewards players with new Pokémon for time slept, was announced during a press conference Tuesday. It launches next year with a new accessory to help. Alongside Pokémon Go we saw the Pokémon Go Plus device, a pedometer of sorts that let you know when you could catch a Pokémon, which made the game playable without opening your phone. The Pokémon company unveiled the Pokémon Go Plus +, which uses the same tracking technology to watch, I mean help, you sleep.
Pokémon Sleep launches in 2020 along with a Pokémon Home app, which lets you trade and store Pokémon from Pokémon Go, 3DS, and Switch games all on a cloud server that is accessible from smartphones. If you’ve been trading Pokémon through the generations, your whole crew can finally get together. Pokémon Goalso introduced sleeping Snorlax to promote Sleep, so if you’re eager for some Pokémon action, that's a good place to start.
Whether Pokémon Sleep will take off—meaning we as a culture grant the Pokémon company information and data on every aspect of our lives—or not is yet to be seen. Admittedly, it’s a good idea, considering there are a lot of fitness and sleep apps on the market, but none that make it so fun. And if nothing else, it gives humanity something we’ve needed ever since Clinton couldn't get enough people to Pokémon-go-to-the-polls for her: a reason to sleep peacefully at night.
This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
