The highly anticipated Pokémon Go Plus bluetooth accessory which will help you catch Pokémon without having your phone out all the time has been delayed until September.
The accessory, which is described as ‘an easy and convenient way to catch Pokemon and collect items’ such as ‘Poke Balls, Berries, Pokemon Eggs and other items at set PokeStop locations without having to look at your smart phone’, was originally meant to launch this month for US$34.99. The Nintendo of America twitter feed announced the bad news saying:
The #PokemonGO Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch. https://t.co/QgjZf1aAV6
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 27, 2016
The reason for the delay hasn’t been given, but Niantic, Nintendo and the Pokémon company may be waiting for stable, global availability of the game to launch an accessory which may put additional load on the games servers – but that’s pure speculation on our part.
The Pokémon Go Plus accessory isn’t the only way you can detect Pokémon without pulling your phone out, a new app – PokeDetector – Notifications – will let you perform a similar function with your Android Wear watch. The app is free, but you can update it in-game to search for specific Pokémon, to really help you catch them all.
Locally Nintendo has not commented on an Australian launch of the accessory, but it should be available through local channels. Online retailer Amazon currently has a listing for the Pokemon Go Plus, but it’s frustratingly listed as ‘Currently Unavailable’, but hopefully will ship to Australia if local stores don’t stock it – though given the popularity of the game, that’s unlikely.
