Niantic trying to determine best approach for trading in Pokemon GO, won’t be done through the internet
Posted on March 1, 2017 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News
Pokemon GO is still missing a key feature from the main Pokemon games: trading. It should be added via an update in the future, but Niantic still has some work to do before it’s ready.
Speaking with Polygon at GDC, senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura confirmed that trading won’t happen through the internet. He also indicated that the team is still trying to figure out the best way to handle the functionality. Failing here could “easily kill the game.”
Nomura said:
“[Trading] won’t be through the internet. You shouldn’t be able to exchange your Pokémon with someone who is 100 miles away from you. … The person needs to be in your proximity.”
“I wasn’t really thinking of trading as a way to solve the local area spawn issue. That was more, we have a couple Pokémon that only spawn in a couple regions, and that was the hope, that some Pokémon you have to know someone or find someone who lives in certain regions and meet and exchange. We don’t want to just have that be an online game that you can just exchange virtually.”
“We’re still trying to come up with an answer [to trading] that makes sense so it doesn’t kill the game. If we fail this, we can easily kill the game.”
