‘Pokemon Go’ is available for iOS and Android devices. (Niantic)
New gameplay features are coming to Pokemon Go.
In a post on its website today, Niantic Labs, the developer of Pokemon Go, suggested that some major new gameplay features will be added this spring, i.e. sometime within the next two months.
“With spring arriving in the northern hemisphere, players can look forward to all new cooperative social gameplay experiences in Pokémon GO that will give Trainers new and exciting reasons to get back into the sunshine,” the post reads.
There are two features Niantic may be referring to here, with the first one being a gym rework. This is something Niantic has been teasing for a few months now, saying that they want to update the way that players go through gyms in the game.
“The gym portion [of Pokémon Go] needs a lot more work, and we are trying to improve it and make a bigger change to how the system works,” Niantic senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura told Polygon in March 2017. “…There is very limited gameplay in the gyms. They simply do not work as well as we would wish. We will revise this aspect of the game, so that there’s more teamwork and people participating have more incentives and rewards.”
He did say, however, that “we need a little bit more time to think through how we do it.” But Niantic’s post today specifically says that the new gameplay feature will be something cooperative, and considering Niantic has said that they want to make the gyms more cooperative, this may be what they’re referring to.
Another option would be the addition of Pokemon trading. This is another feature that Niantic has explicitly said is coming, though we haven’t been given any sort of time frame. In February, Niantic CEO John Hanke told Vice that trading is on its way.
“It’s going to be done soon,” he said. “It is what it is. I’ll take the massive wave of hysteria we enjoyed, and just deal with the fact that it’s caused us to take a bit longer to get the rest of the features up. We’re really happy to make our users happy.”
Niantic has said that trading will not take place over the Internet and that you’ll have to do it with someone who is physically near you in the real world.
The rest of Niantic’s post today mainly consists of a list of awards Pokemon Go has won recently and an expression of gratitude towards “the game’s awesome and supportive community.”
Read more about Pokemon Go in Spanish at AhoraMismo.com:
