'We are six months behind': Niantic CEO on Pokemon trading and GO player battles

by Daniel Petrov / Jul 06, 2017, 9:14 AM

'We are six months behind': Niantic CEO on Pokemon trading and GO player battles

On the first Pokemon GO anniversary, Niantic's CEO sat down for an interview, and disclosed some long-awaited news that fans have been clamoring to hear since the game's inception. No, we aren't talking about the Shiny Pikachu that is yet to reveal itself. Granted, it just did a huge update, introducing gym raids and other niceties, but there is more in the pipeline, said Niantic's CEO John Hanke.

It turns out that the immense popularity of the game caught Niantic by surprise, and they had to divert resource to simply keep the servers up and running, let alone working on new features. Fret not, however, trading precious Pokemons with your buddies, and individual player battles are still in the cards - it just takes Niantic six months more to introduce a suite of grand new features than they initially planned.

By that metric, we won't be seeing anything more significant in terms of added functionalities until year's end, yet Pokemon trading and player vs player are something that can certainly occupy the typically slower winter months. On the plus side, Mr Hanke did slip out that the gym battle update that came in June isn't the final stop, and as far as gym changes go, "there are more coming" Good, we will be patiently awaiting the day when we won't have to beg friends on opposing teams to kick us out of languishing in a gym prison for days on end, so we can collect some dough. Hopefully, before the summer is out.

source: The Verge

Options

6 Comments

1. Babadook

Posts: 230; Member since: May 24, 2016

They still don't have 1v1 battles yet? WTF? (I've never played the game, but figured that was put out a few months ago in an update). Wow

posted on Jul 06, 2017, 9:27 AM 0

4. kent-gaga

Posts: 609; Member since: Apr 10, 2012

with the gameplay right now, which is just tap and swipe to fight, PvP battles are pretty boring tbh they'll have to think of another interesting way to stir it up a bit, but I don't think it's going to be turn-by-turn like in the OG game