Development

Development

John Hanke, the founder of Niantic
The concept for the game was conceived in 2014 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company as an April Fools' Day collaboration with Google, called Pokémon Challenge.[17] Ishihara was a fan of developer Niantic's previous transreality game, Ingress, and saw the game's concept as a perfect match for the Pokémon series.[18] Niantic used the crowdsourced[19] data from Ingress to populate the locations for PokéStops and gyms within Pokémon Go.[20] In 2015, Ishihara dedicated his speech at the game's announcement on September 10 to Iwata, who had died two months earlier.[21] The game's soundtrack was written by longtime Pokémon series composer, Junichi Masuda, who also assisted with some of the game's design.[22] Among the game's visual designers was Dennis Hwang, who previously worked at Google and created the logo of Gmail.[23]
On March 4, 2016, Niantic announced a Japan-exclusive beta test would begin later that month, allowing players to assist in refining the game before its full release. The beta test was later expanded to other countries.[24] On April 7, it was announced that the beta would expand to Australia and New Zealand.[25] Then, on May 16, the signups for the field test were opened to the United States.[26][27] The test came to an end on June 30.[28]
At Comic-Con 2016, John Hanke, founder of Niantic, revealed the appearances of the three team leaders: Candela (Team Valor), Blanche (Team Mystic), and Spark (Team Instinct).[29][30] Hanke conveyed that approximately 10% of the ideas for the game were implemented. Future updates, including the much-anticipated addition of trading, more Pokémon,[31] implementation of Pokémon Centers at PokéStops, a patch for the "three step glitch", and easier training, were also confirmed.[32] He also stated that Niantic would be continuing support for the game for "years to come".[31]

Pokémon Go Plus
The Pokémon Go Plus is a Bluetooth low energy wearable device, developed by Nintendo, that allows players to perform certain actions in the game without looking at their smart device.[33]

When a player is near a Pokémon or PokéStop, the Plus vibrates.

[33] The player can then press the button to capture the Pokémon or receive items from the PokéStop; the player cannot check what they have received until the next time they sign in to the app on their mobile device.[18] The design consists of a Poké Ball and the shape of the Google Maps pin.[33] The decision to create the device rather than create a smart watch app was to increase uptake among players for whom a smart watch is prohibitively expensive.[34] It is set for release in September 2016.[35][36][37]

From: Wikipedia