Pokemon Sleep: New game ‘turns sleeping into entertainment’ as players rewarded for going to bed

'The concept of this game is for players to look forward to waking up every morning'

The "Pikachu" balloon sponsored by The Pokemon Company floats down Broadway during the 75th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 22 November 2001 in New York (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

Pokemon has revealed a new game aimed that tries to make people go to sleep.

The game – called Pokemon Sleep and due to be released in 2020 – will track its players' sleeping patterns and watch to see when they wake up. That will decide how the game is played, the Pokemon Company said.

The game aims to do what Pokemon Go did to walking, but with sleeping. It aims to make it into a form of entertainment, said the Pokemon Company's president and chief executive, Tsunekazu Ishihara, in a press conference announcing the unusual game.

"After walking, we decided to focus on the act of sleeping," Mr Ishihara said.

"Everyone spends a large part of their lives sleeping, and turning that into entertainment is our next challenge at Pokemon.

"The concept of this game is for players to look forward to waking up every morning.

"Pokemon Sleep utilises information such as the player's time spent sleeping or the time they wake up to create a new kind of entertaining game play."

Nintendo also appeared at the event, showing off a device called Pokemon Go Plus Plus. As the name suggests, it is an updated version of the Pokemon Go Plus gadget that came out in 2016, and uses an accelerometer to track the user's sleep and send the data to their smartphone via Bluetooth.

"By combining these sleep tracking features with the functionality of a Pokemon Go Plus, this device can help transform both the time spent walking during the day and also the time spent sleeping at night into something more fun and enriching for everyone," said Kazuhiro Maruyamam, head of Nintendo's hardware development group.

The Pokemon Company is working with Select Button to develop the game, though there were no details on how the game would work.

During the event, the Japanese firm also announced a cloud-based storage and trading service called Pokemon Home, as well as a Detective Pikachu game sequel for the Nintendo Switch, and another mobile app game known as Pokemon Masters.

Additional reporting by agencies