Pokémon GO! - (Savage)

(NEWEST) Article: How Pokémon Go will benefit from Niantic’s lessons from Ingress on location-based game design Dec 16, 2015

(NEW) "Pokemon, obviously, you’d go out into the real world and find Pokemon and battle them against other players and trade them and go to gyms. That’s how it’s going to work." - John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs
(NEW) "It wasn’t totally accidental. Google had worked with Pokémon on a Google Maps mashup for April Fool’s three years ago. We had some experience building a mini-product with them. We actually used the same company to do the launch video for Pokémon Go as worked on the April Fool’s video." - Hanke
(NEW) "This is a Pokémon experience that’s brand new, and yet it goes back to the very origin of the franchise. It’s about a kid who goes out in the world and finds Pokémon. If you strip away a lot of the complexity and stuff that’s been added on, it’s the most basic expression of that concept." - Hanke
(NEW) "We’ve learned a lot on those fronts with Ingress. Even if you’re in a small town — I grew up in a town of 1,000 people in Texas. We had that as a design goal. If we’re going to build a game that works with location, it has to be fun for people anywhere to play, in small towns as well as San Francisco. If we designed something that only worked in San Francisco, it wouldn’t be a real success. We wanted it to work globally." - Hanke
(NEW) "Our goal is to make it so you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon. It may not be the most rare Pokémon in the world, but there’ll be a population of Pokémon living near all our players. Gyms will be a bit more rare. You want to find gyms so you can level up your Pokémon and battle there, so it will take a little more effort to get there." - Hanke
(NEW) "Pokémon will live in different parts of the world depending on what type of Pokémon they are. Water Pokémon will live near the water. It may be that certain Pokémon will only exist in certain parts of the world. Very rare Pokémon may exist in very few places. But you can trade. If you live in a place with lots of water Pokémon and you come to an event — we have these Ingress events that are getting bigger and bigger." - Hanke
(NEW) "We’ll have events for Pokémon as well. Those are competitive, but they can also be places to trade stuff with other players. Pokémon trading is going to be huge. You can’t get all of them by yourself. If you want all of them you’ll have to trade with other players. Or you have to be someone who takes time off work and travels the world for a year. There may be people who do that." - Hanke
(NEW) [On the Pokemon Go Plus device] "Why not have a little device that buzzes when you’re near something important? You can interact with it in some subtle way, and then later on you can open up your app or your tablet and you see, 'Oh, I got this or did that.'" - Hanke
(NEW) [On playing with children using the Plus device] "It vibrates and flashes when you’re near Pokémon. When they press a button in a certain sequence they capture it. Then, later on, you can look at it together on your phone or tablet." - Hanke
(NEW) [On the Plus device having the same in-game functions as the phone] "It’s more limited, but it’s heads-up gameplay. I can show you the design prototype. It’s very slightly bigger, a bit heavier, but this is pretty much the size of it. It comes with a bracelet so you can wear it like a wrist device. It’s Fitbit-ish in terms of size. Battery lasts a long time. You don’t have to worry about charging all the time. This is a multicolor LED and button. You’ll notice that it’s the Google Map pen with the Pokeball shape and color fused together. You can imagine kids going to school with this on their backpack." - Hanke
(NEW) [On how many Niantic employees exist as of this article's release] "We’re 41 people." - Hanke
(NEW) [On games getting better when VR comes to market] "Yeah, you get your head out of the phone and hopefully take in more of what’s around you. You’ll get some more interesting visuals. That will be novel for people. It’ll be exciting. Ingress will be enhanced greatly when those devices come to market, as will Pokémon Go and other games we make. It’s going to elevate." - Hanke
(NEW) "Today millions of people are interacting with Ingress. Tens of millions of people will interact with Pokémon Go. You can have differentiated client experiences that interface into that same game world. If 100 people have Magic Leap devices, they can play in the game with 5 million people on smartphones. They’ll have a different experience, one that’s maybe better in ways, but you don’t have to wait until 5 million people have Magic Leap to let them have this fun, social, real world game experience." - Hanke
(NEW) "The places that you’ll interact with in the real world — historical sites, artwork, prominent or special local businesses, those will play a role in Pokémon Go just as they would for us. That same mechanic of encouraging people to take a walk in the park and see some aspect of their city they haven’t seen before, to go explore a nook or cranny in a part of the city they haven’t been to before so they can get a new Pokémon, that will be at work. Measuring how far people have walked and all of that will have specific payoffs for players in Pokémon Go." - Hanke
(NEW) [On live Pokemon Go events happening at game release] "We haven’t announced yet, but I’d say that given the success we’ve had with Ingress, it’s a pretty safe bet." - Hanke
(NEW) "There will be teams to join in Pokémon, more than two. Those teams will compete against one another." - Hanke
(NEW) [When told "The sort of thing that exists within the fiction already."] "Yeah, with different gyms and teams and trainers." - Hanke
(NEW) [When asked about directed story vs user-created story] "Hmm. Nothing to say about that presently. ... I would expect there to be a narrative along with Pokémon, but some of that stuff we’re still working out." - Hanke
Article: Augmented reality zombies, invisible Pokemon and the gaming of things Dec 7th, 2015

"The fun of Ingress and Pokémon Go is not totally confined to what happens on the screen. A lot of it is the experience of being out, walking and seeing things, and interacting with other people." - John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs
In Pokémon Go, due out for iOS and Android devices in 2016, players capture, battle, train and trade Pokémon who appear in the real world as you're out walking. [OP's Note: Noticed the word "train" was mentioned which hasn't been mentioned before in other sources. However, this is from the author of the article so it's not necessarily a quote but could be info given to them from John Hanke. I might delete this part since it technically isn't 100% verified.]
Hanke says the team decided to use a stand-alone device rather than a smartwatch because a more affordable stand-alone device has a greater potential to be used by more people.
Article: Play On; This video game inspires people to go outside, and hike, and bike ... Sept 24, 2015

"We’re not quite ready to talk in more depth about Pokémon GO than what was revealed in the announcement press release and assets. Come mid-October we’ll be able to start going into more depth about our plans for the game, and about our plans for real world gaming overall.” - Niantic representative Evan Dexter
Article: ‘Pokémon Go’ Wants to Take Monster Battles to the Street Sept 10, 2015

A spokesman for Niantic declined to say what kinds of items will be for sale but said the the game won’t include ads.
Pokémon Company didn’t give many details on how the videogame will take to the streets, other than to say it will use location-tracking technology to identify when there is a Pokémon-toting player.