Pokemon GO is a mobile game developed and released by Niantic, available for Android and iOS. It was launched in 2016, gaining popularity extremely fast. By the end of 2016, Pokemon GO had been downloaded more than 500 million times by users all around the world. Pokemon Sword and Shield is one of the most expected releases of the year, having been officially announced on Pokemon Day, February 27, 2019, during a Nintendo Direct announcement.
At 2017’s E3 conference, Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokemon Company, announced their next game series would be released on Nintendo Switch, but no more information was divulged at the time.
Game Freak is the leading developer of Pokemon games for Nintendo, which also develops Pokemon Sword and Shield for Nintendo Switch. Rumors say the developer is planning to make Pokemon GO compatible with the newest release of the franchise.
Pokemon Sword and Shield Might Be Compatible With Pokemon GO
A Pokemon GO dataminer, Chrales, found evidence to back up the rumors of the potential compatibility between Pokemon Sword and Shield and Pokemon GO. Chrales discovered that while looking through the game’s code of the latest Pokemon GO 0.143.0. He came upon a new string referred to as “koala_settings,” which seem to be made for a separate app. The source says the name “koala.”
Chrales believes that “koala” might be the codename internally used to refer to Pokemon Sword and Shield. We already know Game Freak has a habit of matching each game with an animal or natural element, so the theory seems plausible. For example, Game Freak’s previous release, Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! & Let’s Go, Eevee, went by the codename “beluga.”
None of the two developer companies made any official announcement yet, so the rumors that Pokemon Sword and Shield would be compatible with Pokemon GO should be taken with a grain of salt. However, we hope they are correct, as the possibility to connect Niantic’s augmented reality mobile game to Game Freak’s newest console game sounds extremely exciting.
