Thousands of Pokemon Go fans crammed into Hall H at Comic Con this weekend in hopes of getting some inside information from Niantic CEO and Pokemon Go lead developer John Hanke.
While the (often obsessive) Pokemon players weren’t rewarded with news of Pokemon’s rarest characters—four of which haven’t yet appeared inside the game— they did get news on some soon to-be-released features and characters.
Pokemon Go’s developers will be adding more Pokemon species to the game. The original set of 151 Pokemon will expand to nearly 700 species over the next several years—and that will include rare Pokemon, Hanke said. “There are some rare ones that haven’t showed up yet that will be showing up.” The game is also working on ways for players to train each others’ Pokemon, trade Pokemon with each other and “breed” the digital creatures.
Hanke seemed very interested in giving Pokéstops a bigger priority in the game: “That’s a pretty cool idea that you can acquire an object that changes the function of a Pokéstop and gives it a new ability.” Specifically, Niantic wants to give players the power to identify and customize Pokestops in their area. Developers will also be expanding the role of Pokemon “Team Leaders,” now known as Candela, Blanche and Spark. In future updates, the team leaders will likely be able to interact with players, offering advice.
Pokemon Go developers did confirm that the game has hidden “Easter egg” content for players to root out and find. Among the surprises, a hack that lets you determine the evolutionary cycle for certain Pokemon.
These updates would happen “in the coming months and years” according to Hanke, who said that they still don’t have a specific date for these ideas. Niantic’s priority right now is in solving the server issues that the game is currently experiencing as it expands to new countries weekly: “We’re working really hard to keep the servers up and running. We’re working on it, but its gonna take a little longer.”
The game, which lets allows players capture, battle, and train virtual creatures that appear on device screens as though in the real world, has become a global cultural phenomenon. It set the record for most downloads in Apple’s App Store in a week, and caused Nintendo’s stock to skyrocket. But in the last day, the stock took a steep tumble when investors realized that Nintendo doesn’t actually make the game (Niantic does) and will experience limited upside from its breakout success.
