Pokémon GO came last summer and immediately became the most popular mobile game, by far. The hype dropped since then, but the game is still relatively popular. While Niantic promised new features, they are still missing from the game.
Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke said that Pokémon trading, a feature included in most other modern Pokémon games, will be soon available in the mobile game. The announcement came in July 2016, but the trading is still nowhere to be found.
Further, Hanke stated that that player vs. player battles will also find its way to the Pokémon GO, in an effort to build the multiplayer and social aspects of the game. The battles should come soon, although no firm release date was announced.
Hanke got recently interviewed by Waypoint, and in the interview, he said that the two long-awaited features are on their way. “It’s going to be done soon,” Hanke said, stating that server problems were the main reason for the delay of the two features. Now that servers are stable, the battles and trading should soon come, in one of the future updates.
Also, the game has a new update, introducing a total of 80 new Pokémon to the game, but the two features mentioned are omitted from the update.
The omission of the two new features will certainly hurt the game’s player base since Niantic still haven’t included them despite promising to bring them for months.
It seems Niantic is currently focused on live events, at least according to Henke, and will try to bring them to the game as soon as possible. Although live events sound cool, it would be better for Niantic to finally bring the battles and trading, since the company announced them almost six months ago.