Niantic still planning trading and player versus player battles for Pokemon GO
Niantic is still continuing its plans to update Pokemon GO. 50 new Pokemon are due out soon, and a dynamic weather system is being implemented.
Some much-requested features are still missing in action, however. Since the beginning of Pokemon GO, fans have wanted to trade, but that isn’t currently possible. Player versus player battles also aren’t supported.
Although it’s disappointing that this functionality is still missing in action, Niantic global product marketing lead Archit Bhargava has again promised that these types of features are on the way. Bhargava told IGN the following:
“Trading was mentioned in the initial launch trailer of the game, so that is definitely something that we want to get to at some point. I think the priority has always been, you know, what is the feature that we can launch now that we feel will get the community excited and energized. So we do continue to talk about some of the features that you mentioned, and they are on the roadmap. We just haven’t fully investigated those and talked about how would we want to bring those into Pokemon Go. So that is definitely something that we’re focused on.”
“December typically for us ends up being a big planning month, looking at the year ahead to plan for it, and start spec-ing out and thinking of how we want to bring these features to market. So they’re all in active discussion with the team right now.”
Bhargava was also asked about other possible changes like a higher level cap. He said in response:
“… we’re actively discussing that at the moment. It’s something that we ourselves as fans have requested on the product team and the marketing team. So the teams are actively looking into that.”
“For now, though, we thought it had been a while since the Pokemon from the Johto region came out, that was in February. So we definitely felt the need to bring out the Hoenn region Pokemon, so that became the focus, and dynamic weather came through that. So that’s the focus now and we definitely want to get to those other features very soon.”
