Pokemon GO will receive three major content updates over the course of this year, Niantic’s Chief Executive Officer John Hanke revealed on Tuesday. While speaking at the latest iteration of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Hanke said that the San Francisco-based developer is still hard at work developing new features for its popular augmented reality (AR) game. When referring to the three major content updates that Niantic has in plans for this year, Hanke said that the Generation 2 update is one of those key additions. Seeing how the inclusion of Generation 2 pocket monsters in Pokemon GO already started and is happening in stages, it seems that the three massive updates Hanke was referring to won’t actually roll out on three occasions, but more of them. In light of that fact, Niantic’s CEO was possibly talking about general content categories that the mobile game developer is planning to add to Pokemon GO this year.
The head of the San Francisco-based developer didn’t go into any specifics regarding upcoming Pokemon GO content updates, but his previous comments revealed that Niantic is working on a trading system, player-versus-player battles, and a major overhaul of the existing gym mechanics. Seeing how recent reports suggested that the trading system isn’t a priority despite being slated for a release by the end of the year, it seems likely that the next major addition to Pokemon GO will either be a redesign of the current gym system or player-versus-player battles. However, neither are likely to roll out before Niantic is done with adding the second generation of pocket monsters to its mobile game. At the moment, Pokemon GO features a little over 80 Generation 2 Pokemon and there’s a hundred of them in total, so another expansion of the creature pool will likely follow in the coming months.
While Pokemon GO isn’t as popular as it used to be back when it launched last July, the AR game is still attracting millions of daily users and is earning eight figures per month. Due to that state of affairs, Niantic will likely continue updating its hit mobile game for the foreseeable future.