Pokemon Go
became a cultural phenomenon in 2016 despite being an extremely bare bones experience that did away with almost everything that made Pokemon games fun in the first place. The two most glaring omissions are most certainly the inability to actually battle anyone in real time, and the complete lack of Pokemon trading. Now, after eight months on app stores worldwide, the game is finally getting the features it really should have had on day one.
John Hanke, founder and CEO of Pokemon Go developer Niantic, recently revealed in an interview that both trading and player vs player battles are currently in the works, though they may first appear in what he called “an abbreviated form.” The additions are coming “soon.”
Hanke also revealed that the delay in implementing the features was largely a result of the massive server issues the company experienced shortly after the launch of Pokemon Go. Anyone who played the game around launch day knows how utterly broken the game was for many, many days. Hanke says that if the company hadn’t been so wrapped up in getting its server situation under control, one of those upcoming features would probably already be in the game.
“It’s going to be done soon,” Hanke told Waypoint. “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.”
