Upcoming Pokemon mobile game Pokemon Masters has five million registrants ready to play it

Due out on August 29

If you burned out on Pokemon Go (or never started), there’s a new Pokemon mobile game coming to town very soon: Masters.

The gist is you’ll be syncing Pokemon up with trainers for battles and friendship, as the game takes a decidedly stat-based approach (perfect for endless grinding!). Battles will take place in a 3v3 format, and will be in real time, with teams of creatures sporting a “move gauge” for a slight strategic spin.

Note that this is DeNA we’re talking about here: one of the absolute kings of IAP (microtransactions), who has been working very closely with Nintendo these past three years on the mobile side of their business. While DeNA typically does a decent job on the design side, I’m always waiting with bated breath to see how predatory their IAP scheme is. Just looking at all of the statlines has me worried about the confirmed gacha (gambling) element, which has the whole “pull a duplicate? level up!” mechanic.

You can pre-register on iOS here and Android here. Masters will be released worldwide on August 29, and if you registered, it’ll automatically be downloaded to your device at launch.

Pokemon Masters [Twitter]