Pokemon Go is now available for iOS and Android. (Niantic)
UPDATE: On Saturday afternoon, Niantic announced that the buddy update is beginning to roll out to players around the world. It might not have hit the app stores in your area yet, but it likely will within the next 24 hours.
Four days after the Pokemon Go buddy system update was expected to launch, fans are growing increasingly antsy.
As of Friday afternoon, the highly-anticipated update has still not arrived, and it’s now looking less likely that we’ll see it before the end of the week. It was previously thought that the buddy feature would roll out sometime between September 5th and 7th; that’s because Niantic Labs has said that they plan to release biweekly updates, and Monday would mark two weeks since the last one.
But now the week is coming to a close without anything hitting the app stores and without any word from Niantic.
It does seem that the buddy system is coming sooner rather than later, though. In a post on their website last Friday, Niantic said that this is the next addition to the game and that it is “just around the corner.”
So why haven’t we seen anything this week? One possibility is that Niantic felt pressured to announce this feature sooner than they intended and before it was ready to be rolled out. Players originally discovered the buddy system by sifting through the game’s source code, and after rumors about it began to spread online, that’s all anyone in the Pokemon Go community could talk about for a few days. So perhaps Niantic felt the need to end the speculation and make the news official, even though they still needed more time to fine-tune the system.
It’s also possible that the company has just been busy with their Apple presentation and with Pokemon Go Plus. Over the past week, Niantic CEO John Hanke appeared at Apple’s keynote to announce a Pokemon Go app for Apple Watch, and the release date of Pokemon Go Plus was revealed shortly after. Niantic is an incredibly small team, consisting of fewer than 50 employees according to its LinkedIn page, so this has all been quite a bit for them to handle.
Hopefully the update will be launching soon, but at the moment, Niantic has not given any indication of when we should expect it. This has angered some fans, who wish the developer would make use of its social media accounts to keep them informed of what’s happening behind the scenes and when there are serious delays.
For those unfamiliar with the buddy system, it’s a new feature coming to Pokemon Go that will allow players to pick one Pokemon as their favorite and walk with this creature throughout the game. Trainers will receive rewards, including candy, for walking certain distances with their Pokemon. This would make it much easier to evolve a Pokemon that is not seen in the wild too often, as you could simply walk it around until you get the candy required for an evolution. It’s believed that there may be other benefits involved, but nothing else has been confirmed.
Stay tuned for more information about the forthcoming Pokemon Go update. Here’s how you can be notified of exactly when it goes live:
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