The Pokémon Company has been hosting a live press conference in Japan to focus on future strategy for the franchise, and has announced an AR (augmented reality) smartphone app - for Android and iOS - called Pokémon Go. This is being produced in conjunction with Nintendo and developed by start-up Niantic, and it's coming in 2016.

Employing ideas that have been utilised in a number of other apps, this utilises a smartphone's location data and camera to recreate gameplay in the real world. The broad idea is that you'll find, catch and battle with Pokémon in the real world, and a separate Pokémon Go Plus wrist accessory will serve as an additional notification device. The idea is that you can play alone and interact with others through the game, and Game Freak fans should be pleased to know that Yunichi Masuda is consulting on the project; it's also planned to interact with the main series games too.

Unsurprisingly this will be free-to-play but with microtransactions, while the Go accessory will no doubt be a hot ticket item in stores if the app achieves early success.

A big hat tip to Serebii for following the NicoNico stream and providing this information and imagery. You can see a lengthy reveal trailer and the full press conference below. Are you excited by this?

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