Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 1 Comment

A small Pokemon GO update is making its way out to users as of today. Version 1.27.4 is out now on iOS while Android owners have access to version 0.57.4.

When we said this update is small, we meant it. Niantic says that the patch only implements minor text fixes.

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 38 Comments

This week, Wired’s German division conducted an interview with Niantic CEO John Hanke. Hanke was able to answer some important questions about plans for Pokemon GO in 2017 and more.

First, Hanke was asked about what fans can expect from Pokemon GO’s second big update this year. He confirms that “playing together and gym battles” will be primarily addressed.

“There are a couple of areas that need to be improved – one of them being playing together and gym battles. We released those in an incomplete state. We knew from Ingress that cooperation and planning can be a lot of fun. When people have a common goal, then that’s a strong incentive to meet up with friends or even with people you don’t know.”

“The gameplay in gym battles is very limited. They just don’t work as well as we wish they would. We will overhaul this aspect of the game to ensure more teamwork and to give people a bigger incentive to receive the rewards from gym battles.”

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

Pokemon GO experienced significant issues at launch. During the game’s first few days, the game had major connection problems. We knew that the huge influx of players was putting a strain on Pokemon GO’s servers, but now we have a better idea as to how much.

Niantic director of software engineering Ed Wu said during a GDC presentation that Niantic came up with anticipated network traffic based on the player base and the growth curve for other popular mobile games. That was in addition to a “ludicrous” estimate of five times that number. It wasn’t enough though, as Niantic exceeded its network traffic estimates for the entire world just a few hours after Pokemon GO launched in Australia and New Zealand alone.

Wu said:

“We knew that we had something special on our hands when we nearly exceeded our peak worldwide capacity — the expected number — in a couple of hours and were trending well on the way towards that five times, ‘ludicrous’ number on what we thought would be less than five percent of our total world-wide … install base in. That was the point at which I called in the cavalry … at Google.”

According to Wu, Pokemon GO’s peak traffic was roughly 50 times more than they had initially estimated.

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 2 Comments

Niantic CEO John Hanke previously indicated that Pokemon GO’s lore would be expanded in the coming months. However, in an interview with Polygon, senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura mentioned that it isn’t a top priority currently. That’s simply because Niantic is “a very small team and we can only do so much at once.”

Nomura added:

“It’s not like we’re forgetting [about the characters], but it’s just resource-wise, what we are doing next … Do we do multiplayer and gen two versus putting out more narrative?. So far, it’s not being our focus, but we are not leaving it behind. I personally still want to think a lot more stories behind them and narratives.”

Niantic is currently focusing on building new functionality of Pokemon GO. This includes trading as well as other multiplayer features.

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

The 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards took place earlier this evening. At the event, there was one Nintendo-related winner.

Pokemon GO was chosen as the “Best Handheld / Mobile Game”. It beat out Super Mario Run, Pokemon Sun / Moon, Clash Royale, and Reigns.

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 3 Comments

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.”

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 2 Comments

During a session at GDC this week, Niantic’s Dennis Hwang provided a look at how Pokemon GO changed throughout development. The company messed around with different versions of the overworld map, a variety of takes on the appearance of the battle screen, and even original plans for the trainer avatar.

As for the trainer, originally Niantic had an avatar more in line with the character from Pokemon Ruby / Sapphire. However, it was scrapped during early stages of development.

Hwang said during his talk:

“[In] the original IP, the trainers have a much younger look as the target audience tends to skew younger. But for us, the avatars, we wanted to kind of elevate them to an older generation slightly.”

“We didn’t want some super stylized big-headed, small-bodied characters running on the map when you’re the real game hero. We kind of wanted to match the virtual with the physical.”

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 8 Comments

At a keynote in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress today, Niantic CEO John Hanke teased the future of Pokemon GO. Three major new releases are planned for the mobile game this year. Hanke didn’t clarify, but that’s likely in addition to the Generation 2 update.

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

Update (2/27): The update should now be live on iOS and Android.

Original (2/24): A new update is rolling out for Pokemon GO. However, it won’t be as significant as the last one that introduced a bunch of Pokemon and features.

iOS users will soon have access to version 1.27.3. On Android, the game’s update will be 0.57.3. Niantic says the patch will “implement performance improvements.”

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Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 4 Comments

During the 2017 Game Developers Conference today, Niantic announced that its hit mobile game Pokemon GO has exceeded 650 million downloads.

Niantic chief technology officer Phil Keslin mentioned that trainers have now walked roughly 8.7 billion kilometers (5.4 billion miles) while playing Pokemon GO. Keslin said that distance is “just shy of Pluto”, but it’s actually closer since Pluto is about 7.5 billion kilometers (4.67 billion miles) away even at its farthest distance from Earth.

Keslin added that Niantic intends to keep Pokemon GO fresh with regular content updates.

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