I choose you!

Pokémon GO developer Niantic has already promised more updates to the core app - including the ability to trade monsters with other players - but studio CEO John Hanke has revealed that one-on-one battles may also be featured in the future.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Hanke explained that battles are something that crop up in conversation quite a lot:

I have 10 year old son – he's my Pokémon expert, we play together – he wants to battle his friends in Pokémon Go. Battling is something we talk a lot about. It's probably something that will make its way onto our roadmap.

While combat is already a part of Pokémon GO, battles are currently limited to gyms and do not involve one player fighting the other in real time. Instead, players assign their monsters to gyms and other players then attack them to claim control of that gym, with AI deciding the actions of the defending Pokémon.

Hanke also stated that what's currently available in the app is "the tip of the iceberg" and that Niantic has plenty of ideas for the future. He also held up the company's previous app - Ingress - as an example of how these kind of projects can evolve over time:

I think it will change substantially over the years. If you want to predict the future, you can look at the past. A lot of what we're doing with Pokémon, we learned through three years of hard work with Ingress and building up that community around the world, maturing that technology, the social aspect of it, the group gameplay, and the events for Ingress are really the lifeblood of that game. I think you can expect to see things like that in Pokémon Go.

Are you keen on seeing one-on-one battles come to the app? What other features would you like to see in Pokémon GO? Let us know by posting a comment.

[source techcrunch.com]