The Pokemon Company and Niantic have now officially announced that Ditto can be caught in Pokemon GO. Along with the news, a brief promo has been shared – see it below.

Pokemon GO – changes to Nearby and Sightings features, testing expanded to new areas

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 3 Comments

Niantic has been testing Pokemon GO’s Nearby feature over the past few weeks and months. Primarily, those in San Francisco, California have had access. Niantic is using feedback gathered to improve the functionality.

Changes were made to the manner in which Nearby and Sightings works. Nearby in Pokemon GO now only shows if a PokeStop is close to your location.

Aside from Hawaii and Alaska, all states west of the Mississippi River can try out Nearby and Sightings. These features are also up across Australia in addition to select regions in Canada.

Head past the break for Niantic’s full message about Nearby and Sightings in Pokemon GO.

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Ditto now live in Pokemon GO, can be caught

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 10 Comments

We’ve been hearing rumblings about Pokemon GO adding Ditto, and now it appears to be official. A ton of players are coming forward with claims that they’ve managed to capture the Pokemon.

Nabbing it works as you would expect. Pokemon that you catch will have a possibility of actually being Ditto.

Here’s one of many screenshots that have surfaced within the past few minutes:

It was thought that Ditto would soon be added to Pokemon GO after some signs were found within code of the latest update. We expect that Niantic will make an announcement soon now that players have spotted the Pokemon.

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Complete in-game actions in Pokemon GO during the week of November 23, get double the amount of XP / Stardust

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 1 Comment

Between November 23 and November 30, Pokemon GO players will be given the opportunity to earn double the amount of XP and Stardust. Simply complete an in-game action during this period and you’ll be eligible for the bonus.

Over on the official Pokemon GO website, Niantic wrote the following about the promotion:

“It has been an incredible experience since we launched Pokémon GO a few short months ago in July. We are passionate about creating experiences that encourage exploration and promote exercise. We are humbled that hundreds of millions of you around the world have joined us on this journey. So we would like to say thank you – and what better way to say thank you than to celebrate our community.
So, starting November 23rd at 00:00 UTC and going through November 30th 00:00 UTC, we will double the amount of XP and Stardust you receive when completing in-game actions.”

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Pokemon GO’s new update includes code for shiny Pokemon, more signs that Ditto is coming soon

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 2 Comments

The folks over at The Silph Road have once again poked through Pokemon GO’s latest update in hopes of uncovering information about what’s to come for the mobile game. Two notable elements in particular were found by the site.

First, the phrases “Shiny” and “Rare” have been spotted. Pokemon GO plays a particular audio file when a wild Pokemon is captured that is deemed rare. There is also some new code that segregates Pokemon materials into “default” and “shiny” materials. Materials are used in development for things like how surfaces appear. The Silph Road does also note that Pokemon GO currently does not have any new sprites indicating that shiny Pokemon are coming imminently.

As for something that might be arriving shortly, Ditto now appears more prominently in Pokemon GO’s code. The Silph Road found this evidence in the code:

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Pokemon GO update rolling out (version 1.17.0 / 0.47.1)

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

Pokemon GO is receiving another update. Version 1.17.0 should be out shortly on iOS, while Android users will be at version 0.47.1.

The update primarily addresses a couple of things. Niantic fixed an issue where the Egg-hatching cut-scene animation would sometimes be briefly visible from the map view. Minor text fixes are implemented as well.

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Pokemon GO players caught 1.3 billion Ghost types during Halloween event

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 1 Comment

Speaking with GamesRadar, Niantic revealed that 1.3 billion Ghost type Pokemon were caught during Pokemon GO’s Halloween event. That took place over the span of five days.

Niantic says Gastly was the most popular Pokemon caught during the Halloween period. Cubone was second, followed by Drowzee in third.

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Niantic teases a Pokemon GO secret

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 4 Comments

Niantic CEO John Hanke is teasing a secret hidden within Pokemon GO.

“There will always be secrets in the game that no one has found because we’re always adding new secrets to the game,” Hanke told GamesRadar. “There’s one out there right now and we’ll see how that plays out over the course of the next few weeks.”

Sadly, Hanke didn’t elaborate any further. GamesRadar asked if what he was referring to stems from the Halloween update, but Hanke responding by stating: “I am not giving you any clues.”

Source

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Niantic’s Mike Quigley on Pokemon GO: launch woes, third party apps, the game’s lifespan, more

Posted on 8 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

After yesterday’s interview with gameindustry.biz, Eurogamer also got the chance to sit down and talk with Mike Quigley, Niantic’s chief marketing officer, to talk about Pokemon GO. You can read the full interview here; below are a couple of interesting tidbits:

On how the success of Pokemon GO caught them off guard:

“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, we were overwhelmed by how [Pokémon GO] took off. The success of the product caught us out of position in a couple of areas – we fully admit it. The summer was quite painful – no one slept much. But this has always been a marathon not a sprint. You can look back at Ingress and see that.”
“We can look back and wish we had more resources for certain things, but we kind of weathered it and hopefully people say ‘oh, we are hearing from them more now, there’s more transparency’. And for what it’s worth, regardless of headcount or staffing, one of the reasons people weren’t hearing from us is that there were so many things going on with servers and stuff that was, frankly, distracting the company. We just wanted to make sure the game was still up and running. That took everyone and their focus to take care of things.”

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Niantic’s Mike Quigley on Pokemon GO: the effect of seasons and weather, the game’s future, more

Posted on 8 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in Mobile, News | 3 Comments

gameindustry.biz published an interview today with Mike Quigley, the chief marketing officer at Niantic. Naturally, the interview centered around Pokemon GO, Niantic’s biggest success so far. You can read the full interview here; below are a couple of interesting tidbits:

On how real-life seasons and weather affect a game like Pokemon GO:

“We’ll monitor this stuff, and come this time next year, we might start to think about doing things for the likes of Germany, the UK and North America, who are going through their winter.”
“A lot of people give us credit for the summer release timing, but we also saw strong pick-ups in places like Australia and Brazil, when it was winter for them. There’s a lot of seasonal dynamics we need to consider. It’s a variable that most developers don’t need to worry about. Hopefully we can learn and figure out ways to keep consumers engaged. Maybe there will be other spikes in corresponding glove and hat and coat sales.