The Pokemon Company recently launched a novelty app for the Google Home and Amazon’s Echo that serves almost no purpose aside from being an adorable new way to interact with the two A.I.-driven products. That’s because the new app – called Pikachu Talk – swaps out the human-style voice the assistants would usually respond with for a variety of noises from the beloved yellow Pokemon the app is named after. If that sounds like it would really be entirely useless in terms of serving some sort of useful function, that’s probably down to the fact that it actually kind of is. It doesn’t appear to do much at all aside from being somewhat entertaining for anybody who happens to be a fan of the anime or game series, or just a fan of Pikachu.
As of this writing, there isn’t a specific date for when the app will hit the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. The company has so far only said that it will arrive in the West at some point in 2018. Happily, it is already available in Japan, which has allowed one Twitter user to share a video that can be seen below and shows off how the app works in practice. It’s probably nowhere near as satisfying to watch as it would be to use Pokemon Talk in person, but it is still pretty interesting. Better still, the user managed to get the app running on both the Amazon Echo and Google Home simultaneously. The result of that is that the two devices end up coming very close to sounding like they are having a conversation with one another in Pikachu’s iconic voice.
The latest from The Pokemon Company is most likely not going to be a key selling point for Google Home or Amazon Echo devices for obvious reasons, nor is it expected to come anywhere near to seeing the use that Niantic’s Pokemon GO has. With that said, Pikachu is arguably the most iconic, popular Pokemon of all time. In fact, some fans of the electrically charged pocket monster don’t even like the Pokemon shows or games. So, anybody who owns either of the two digital assistants and doesn’t happen to live in Japan will probably want to keep an eye out for when Pikachu Talk becomes available in their country.
『Amazon Echo』のピカチュウと『Google Home』のピカチュウが会話した結果がこちらになります。ご査収ください。 pic.twitter.com/S8rfe1eZKU
— 宮原俊介@getnews.jp (@shnskm) November 19, 2017