In a recent interview from Waypoint with Niantic CEO John Hanke, he confirmed that trading and player-vs-player are almost done in the testing phase and will be rolling out soon to everyone. These are probably two of the most requested and highly anticipated features wanted for Pokémon Go. Aside from the Generation 2 Pokémon and the Legendary Pokémon. If you’re new to the game, be sure to check out our guides for Pokémon Go, including our recently updated Egg Guide.
Here is a couple quotes from the the interview:
“Servers continued to struggle as millions went out chasing Pokémon; but Hanke stresses that launching in the summer of 2016, before every feature was truly ready, was ‘probably the right thing to do.’ But the patching and bug-fixing of those first few months did stall the work on other parts of the app that Niantic had considered essential — and still does.
“These include monster trading and player-versus-player battles. These are on the way, says Hanke, who adds that if the servers hadn’t been so sketchy at launch, at least one of them would already be out there, likewise a gym battle system, supplementing what he feels is a ‘rudimentary’ version of the game they envisioned.
“‘It’s going to be done soon,’ he says. ‘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.'”
In regards to the Legendary Pokémon (Moltres, Articuno, Zapdos, Mew, Mewtw0), here’s what he had to say about the events that will be centered around them.
“My heart is really with events, and that’s something I really want us to try to solve in 2017,” he concludes. “It’s complicated, though, to do them at the scale that Pokémon Go demands. But, to me, that would be the best demonstration of the vision of this company, which is all about playing games together, outside, with other people.”
Trading and PVP are coming soon, this will probably brings loads of players back into the game. I can see towns hosting their own battle competitions and trading events when this launches. After all, how can we see who is the “very best, like no one ever was?”
Generation 2 won’t be long after this, just throwing this out there…but I think they’ll launch it on the one year anniversary – which is about four months away. Just my speculation, but it’d be a great to to release it.
Pokémon: The Untold Adventures 