As exciting as the additions of Generation 2 Pokemon and Legendary Pokemon were for Pokemon Go players earlier this year, they only scratch the surface of what players expect from the game in the weeks and months to come. Tsunekazu Ishihara, president of The Pokemon Company, expressed as much in a recent interview with Bloomberg, during which he reconfirmed two of the most anticipated upcoming features.
Speaking with Bloomberg this week about the future of the Pokemon franchise, Ishihara explained that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to content and features for Pokemon Go:
“We’ve only accomplished 10 percent of what Pokémon and Niantic are trying to do, so going forward we will have to include fundamental Pokémon experiences such as Pokémon trading and peer-to-peer battles, and other possibilities.”
Earlier this year (shortly after the release of the Generation 2 Pokemon), Niantic CEO John Hanke announced that there would be three major new releases for Pokemon Go before the end of the year. Presumably, one of those updates was the massive gym overhaul which introduced cooperative raids into the game.
With two more “major new releases” remaining, we wouldn’t be surprised to see either trading or PvP battles added to Pokemon Go before the end of 2017. There’s also a chance we’ll see the first traces of Generation 3 Pokemon in the game sooner than later, if data mining of recent updates is anything to go by.
In the meantime, three new Legendary Pokemon have just begun to appear in Pokemon Go and field testing of EX Raid Battles has begun, which means Mewtwo should be in the game any day now.
