Facebook Launches Two Exclusive Pokémon Games
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A pair of Pokémon games is hopping exclusively to Facebook.
The social network on Monday launched “Pokémon Tower Battle” and “Pokémon Medallion Battle” — the first time the Pokémon Company is bringing games based on the mini-monster franchise to the Facebook Gaming platform.
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“Pokémon Tower Battle” is available worldwide while “Pokémon Medallion Battle” is initially available only in the Asia-Pacific region. The titles, available on the Facebook Gaming tab and bookmark, were built on Facebook’s Instant Games in-app platform for casual games.
In “Pokémon Tower Battle,” developed by Bombay Play, players compete by stacking Pokémon against one another to create the tallest towers. As players discover, catch and level-up rare Pokémon, they can compete in real-time against friends or across a global leaderboard.
Pictured: “Pokémon Tower Battle”
“Pokémon Medallion Battle,” developed by GCTurbo, is a digital card battle/strategy game. In the game, trainers collect, battle and evolve Pokémon in medallion form and then try to win gym badges and complete their Pokédex. Players can also discover new Pokémon — introduced every month — to continually enhance their decks.
“Launching these games through Facebook will allow people all over the world to experience Pokémon in digital form, and we are especially thrilled to collaborate with Facebook Gaming in enabling new audiences to enjoy Pokémon games online,” Pokémon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara said in a statement.
“Medallion Battle” is available only in the Asia-Pacific region because it’s in “soft-launch” mode, according to a Facebook rep, but the plan is to release it to more countries soon. “Tower Battle” also started off in soft-launch in APAC, originally available in Philippines.
Facebook has been steadily growing its incursion into the game biz and last week confirmed the acquisition of PlayGiga, a cloud-gaming startup based in Spain, which will be integrated into the Facebook Gaming platform team.
The company says more than 700 million users play games, watch gaming videos, or engage in gaming groups on Facebook.
Pictured: “Pokémon Medallion Battle”
To date, users have engaged in more than 40 billion Instant Games sessions, according to Facebook. Popular titles on Instant Games include Zynga’s “Words With Friends,” Mattel163’s “Uno,” Lotum’s “Quiz Planet,” Softgames’ “Cookie Crush” and “Jumpy Jumpy – Helix Ball.”
In early 2019, the company introduced the Facebook Gaming tab, a hub for players to find and play Instant Games, after launching Instant Games for gaming Groups and Facebook Lite last year.
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