The real reason why Pokémon Sleep′s release was so delayed: Humans can only sleep once a day 

An excerpt from an interview with the development team of Pokémon Sleep has been making the rounds on Japanese Twitter, as it explains one of the reasons the game’s release was delayed for such a long time. The comically obvious and unavoidable reason – needing to sleep in order to test the game, immediately earned the understanding of users. 

Pokémon Sleep, developed by Select Studio and published by The Pokémon Company on July 20, is a sleep tracking-based game that revolves around the plot of researching the sleep patterns of Pokémon. The game’s release came more than four years after it was first announced in May 2019, and the development apparently took about five and a half years from conception to completion. In an interview with Famitsu.com, the members of the Pokémon Sleep development team go into details regarding the ideas and efforts that went into the game, as well as some of the difficulties they came across during the development. 

When asked about the reasons for the late release of the game, the developers cited various challenges they faced, such as having to simultaneously release the compatibility for Pokémon GO Plus + and having the game debut worldwide in 8 different languages at the same time. Another complex issue they faced was finding the right balance between a simple sleep-measurement tool and game, as going too far in excluding game-like elements would make the app boring, while adding too many game-like features would make users play too much, taking away from the purpose of encouraging healthy sleep habits. 

However, what seems to have struck sympathy with users the most is the simple but unconquerable physical barrier the developers had encountered – not being able to test their game until it’s time to sleep, making it possible to test only once a day. This was mentioned by Miyagawa Keisuke, the game director of Select Games in the previously mentioned interview for Famitsu.com.  

―Are there any other points you paid attention to or struggled with? 
 
Miyagawa: We struggled with testing the game, because you have to sleep to do so (laughs). Basically, we could only do one test run per day. While it’s technically possible to proceed by using temporary sleep data, there is always a possibility of something unintended happening when actually sleeping, so we tried to have the testers sleep for real as much as possible. 

A tweet sharing this excerpt from the interview quickly went viral, earning over 34k likes and being retweeted over 8k times. Users found the predicament comical and expressed their complete understanding for the development period being prolonged. 

Users also inevitably wondered if the time spent sleeping in order to test the game was counted as working hours, many finding such a job description desirable. 

It seems no one can blame the developers anymore after learning of the circumstances that prolonged the game’s development.