Pokémon Masters was first announced by The Pokémon Company at a May 29, 2019 press conference in Tokyo alongside other titles in the series for the coming year.[4] It represents the first collaboration between the company and mobile game developer DeNA and was given a tentative release date of some time in 2019 for Android and iOS devices.[5] The concept of the game came from series artist and designer Ken Sugimori who proposed the idea of having all past characters from the main series together in one title.[3]