Pokémon GO Plus + (Yes, Two Pluses) Lets You Bunk With Pikachu

We Nintendo fans are used to a silly name. Sure, the Wii U didn’t do a great job of defining the console for what it was and the New 3DS XL and Switch Lite are hardly the most adventurous options out there. However, nothing in recent memory comes close to the device revealed at today’s Pokémon Presents: the Pokémon GO Plus +.

Hold on, surely that can’t be pronounced “plus plus” on the end? Check out the above advert and you will find that, in fact, it can.

This is a device that seems to be dominantly based around a tie-in for the upcoming Pokémon Sleep app — a nighttime tracker that measures and stores how well you are resting. The Plus + reports when you are first drifting off and when you wake up to let the app know how successful your night’s sleep has been. Of course, to know when either of these things take place, the device is reliant on you pressing its button. Maybe we’re overthinking this, but couldn’t you just do that on your phone anyway?

Rest your very best when #PokemonSleep arrives this summer! pic.twitter.com/WWlil8wB4Q— Pokémon Sleep (@PokemonSleep) February 27, 2023

Looking for a purpose outside of ‘button that you keep in your bed’, the Plus + also “contains a Pikachu” who can serenade you with lullabies as you sleep (though with a vocabulary limited to the words “Pika” and “Pika-Pika”, so don’t go expecting any lyrical wizardry) and “grows friendlier the more sleep you get together”, which sounds like an, uh, interesting function…

Ahem. As the name suggests, the device will also work with Pokémon GO as an autocatcher, meaning that you won’t need to get your phone out in order to catch ‘mon or spin PokéStops. You can even choose to throw Great or Ultra Balls by pressing the button, with “future plans” coming to link your Pokémon Sleep and GO data.

We don’t have a precise release date for this one just yet, though we imagine that it will coincide with the release of Pokémon Sleep which is expected in the Summer.