In an interview with el Periodico, Hanke shed more info on the news he unveiled yesterday. Pokemon GO is on a schedule to receive one major content update every three months, group play is coming and new Pokemon are announced.
It’s yet unclear what “Ingress 2.0” means and which new Pokemon Hanke referred to, but it’s very exciting news!
“RECOVER USERS
How has the public reacted to the update? People seem very happy about the new Pokemon, about the new possibilities of characterizing the character. It has been noticed in the number of users and income. We have recovered users who had stopped playing.
Will there be more releases? We have scheduled the release of updates every quarter this year. People asked for updates, but you have to think that the six months before the launch we could only focus on the first version was very good. We could not think of the new functions, only in small details. Once launched, we were able to start designing the updates, and that’s what we’ll do now every quarter.
How will they be? There will be new functions. For example, being able to play cooperatively, group competitions. It is something that has worked in Ingress and is what we will adapt to Pokemon Go. There will also be new Pokemon.
And new games? I can announce that there will be Ingress 2.0, which will be released later this year. It will be a totally new version, something very important for the current players of Ingress but also for the new ones. We also have other projects, but unfortunately I can not talk about them.”
Niantic hints 3 major content patches in 2017!
John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, shared some exciting Pokemon GO news on the Mobile World Congress 2017!
Hanke’s session was a part of the “The Content Goldrush” panel, where biggest shakers and movers in the world of content creation and distribution shared their views and future plans.
Although expectations were low, Hanke managed to shed some light on the future of Pokémon GO by announcing that three major updates are planned for the game this year. He also highlighted that Generation 2 is the “first major update”.
Given the recent removal of Trading code from the app, it leaves us with only one solid guess: PvP is likely one of the future major updates. We’ve already discussed in depth the future of Pokémon GO and Hanke’s statement comes as reassurance that we were not far off!
TheSilphRoad also published their opinion on the matter and it seems that the consensus is on PvP. They noted that a potential overhaul of the Gym system could be in the works also.
The potential agenda for the updates is yet unknown, but given the events of past year, it’s likely that the following stands:
- One of the major updates could land during July (launch anniversary)
- Second major update could land during September (bridging the content gap)
- Holiday Season filled with events (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year events)
As for the other potential “major update” candidates, we can’t help but to speculate that a worldwide event including Legendary birds could be in the works. This is pure speculation, but we it doesn’t hurt to hope, does it? ?
Stay tuned, much is coming and the year has just begun!
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