Niantic CEO on the Near Future of Pokémon GO

...Still no feature to add in more Stops, so I'm still not going back to this game.

I think Gen III will launch late this year. It’s been a while since the last substantial update, and it’d be perfect to drop Gen III as, say, a December update (preferably not too close to Christmas so as not to compete with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon during its launch and during Christmas). If not, then early February would be a good time.

Also, I think it’d be dope if they surprise dropped some of the Gen III Pokémon in the Halloween event (Duskull line, Shuppet line, Sableye, Absol among maybe some others).

I wonder how many people still go around and play GO. Are there only numbers on, e.g. monthly active users and such?

I've stopped playing close to its original launch. It just felt really shallow and all you could do was look at your Pokemon.

The main pokemon games will be on gen 12 before they even get where we are right now.

@Joeynator3000
Wow I look forward to the day I can put a pokestop and a gym at my house too!

Would gladly welcome Gen3 already. Now I'm just waiting for the next double exp event so that I can use three Lucky eggs on a row. Those 1450 Pidgey candies will be put to good use.

@Joeynator3000 Pokemon Go users can't add stops, but the backlog of stops from Ingress (which become Go stops) has been mostly cleaned out now, and Ingress players can now submit more.

I ended up with a handful more stops on my route to work, and I also found some Ingress players that I might pass some suggestions to.

@Shepdawg1 Niantic has mentioned catching new pokemon for Halloween, hopefully that's new Gen 3, and not just "new for those that don't already have everything"

At least during halloween event I can get the remaining 24 Mismagius candies ready for evolving when General 4 arrive in 2019 or so.

Raids are being played about daily in my local area. Still an active playerbase. The lack of more frequent updates still kind of annoys me though it doesn’t stop me from playing the game on my daily strolls.

Somehow I guess The Pokémon Company is the culprit here when it comes to slowing down the updates. I know they never wanted to see Pokémon GO take over the main series games in terms of popularity.

I’m a vivid main series player and truly believe the RPG’s can co-exist with PoGo without sacrificing updates. Still, some tweaking and finetuning of features in the main series games would be more than welcome. There’s still too much grinding in there and for every time they reduce the grinding (think ORAS), they bring it back in the next installment (Sun/Moon), then reduce it again (Ultra Sun/Moon). It somewhat annoys me that there are still 1% encounters in a Pokémon game in this day and age.

When Pokemon Go first got started, it was hugely popular because it's Pokemon, and many other people got into it because they wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Afterwards, there was a huge dropoff because the game wasn't what so many people imagined. Those who really liked the game kept at it, and many of them still play, and other people have since joined them.

At some point in the future, those old players will return. When they do, they'll complain about the changes that have made the game better since they've left, and will bemoan the game being not the same as it used to be. And they'll claim to be the "real fans".

So yeah, Pokemon Go is going to have it's own bunch of genwunners to laugh at. Be ready for it!

I pay out out of force of habit, not really enjoyment now. I for some dumb reason am determined to see some stuff in the game yet. I've got Gen1 stuff (10~) not including mew/mewtwo level rarity that have never once shown up even in a gym in most cases. It's quite infuriating they can not better balance the game to give a stab at anything that isn't regional. It has been out 15mo now if I remember right and I still have no porygon among others.

Digimon Links is what Pokemon GO should've been. It's an actual turn based RPG.

I continue to play out of habit since I've out too much into the game in order to just stop (hundreds of hours, pokedex is complete for now, lots of investment). The game is still going strong with lots of active players, but Niantic has really screwed up over the last few months with a lack of content. The player base has largely run out of things to do aside from boring grinds for XP, so Gen 3 needs to drop sooner than later.

Still play, enjoy raids and all the good new people Ive met because of them.

How about they fix the app before adding on any new features. It's been WEEKS now since iOS 11 came out and the Pokémon GO Plus is still having issues and basically doesn't work with the new operating system. And the app crashes and slows down randomly just walking with the app open and gets seriously buggy and slow when trying to do gym battles. The developers need to address the deficiencies in this app before they tack on new features.

Still playing. It's still far from perfect but it's fun enough to keep going.

Personally, I'm ready for gen 3. Hardly ever see anything I need now. Still some gen 1 Pokemon I've never seen, which is irritating.

I have resorted to trickery as of late, mostly because I have become disillusioned with parts of the userbase. Let's just say that some "legit" players tend to be... a bit overly serious when it comes to their pride as non-cheating players. To say the least.

I have witnessed levels of discrimination unseen ever since I was in high school, I kid you not.

@AlexSora89
Well, they do have a point. Spoofers affect all players in the long run.

@RodSD64
And that's okay. But sputing the word "fly" on a totally unrelated context and getting a warn for it? Having a point doesn't justify being a jerk about it.

I play this game whenever I go walking outside, to school, in the mall, etc. It is still fun, but I am waiting for the update to add trades and battle other people haha. I am having a hard time finding cyndaquils, maybe cause I'm not in Arizona anymore

Pokémon Go doesn't need new Pokémon, it needs the features that were advertised when the game was launched like, treating, individual battling. This game is still to hollow.

I'm still waiting for trading.

@chiefeagle02
Main reason why i dropped the hell of this "game".

@AlexSora89
Yeah, I agree. I firmly believe that the cheaters must be reported to make the game a better place, but some people just like to basically yell.

Honestly Gen 3 is a few months overdue now (well like at least 4 months). I kind of want them to get to Gen 4 already, or at least have the extended evolutions (such as Electivire) in earlier.

Other thing is that I wish they'd just have a proper event (rather than being country or 'area' exclusive) for foreign Pokemon It was an okay idea at first, but without a GTS option, its become a little annoying now.

@RodSD64
Pretty much.

@AlexSora89
I encourage you to stop using fly. Maybe not in a direct way, but it affects the other players nonetheless...
Edit: Specially considering the Halloween event!

@RodSD64
I don't resort to cheats usually, meaning that if I have to do so, the problem can be blamed on the game rather than the player. I know this sounds self-entitled, but honestly I don't even care, because very few games get me to resort to unorthodox ways to achieve my goals anyway. Pokémon GO is one of them.
That said, it's not like I cheat all the time just for the sake of spoiling other people's fun. I'm not that kind of jerk. Just spinning Pokéstops, catching a few pogeys each day to keep my streak going, and placing Pokémon in a gym if it's already owned by my team. That's it.
The game is rigged against the player in every possible, conceivable way. There's an algorithm that goes out of its way to give players only items they already have in abundance in Pokéstops, for starters. Pokémon often attack and/or jump as soon as the ball is thrown, the ball must be aimed, Legendary Pokémon must be beaten first, aren't available outside of very limited amounts of time, you're given only Premier Balls to catch them, their catch rate is beyond insane, the Pokéstop algorithm is meant to force players to shell out real money for non-infinite items and bag/storage upgrades which should be there from the get-go, and the list goes on and on without mentioning the server issues. And John Hanke was surprised he got booed? The freemium formula was implemented well in other games, like, say, Team Kirby Clash Deluxe. You pay for Gem Apples? Keep doing that and you won't even need - nor be able to, honestly - to pay for more, as you'll own the game by then. True, the game doesn't allow you to back up your save data, but that's a reasonable compromise.
Pokémon GO, on the other hand? I'm unemployed. Meaning all the cash I either put in the game or in my car to play the game comes out from my parents' pockets, which fills me with shame.
The tri-team mechanic, simply put, pits players against each others as a sorry excuse for the game constantly trying to get cash out of players, money that I haven't seen put into infrastructure maintenance nearly as much as Niantic would want us to believe.
Pokéstops can't be added anymore, meaning that whenever I'm working on my old, late great aunt's house in this one lovely place I'll only be able to play GO next to an access point, but with no Pokéstops at all, meaning that even the capture of "tall grass" Pokémon is a mere matter of dumb luck given their abysmal spawn rate. Flying will be my only way to make actual progress whenever I'm there.
At the current state the game is, and I know the following is a bold, whiny statement, the only way for Niantic to keep their userbase from flying is to shell out gas vouchers given the chasm between actual cities - and the actual support they get - and small, isolated towns and villages. And that's without counting the "legit" majority of the game, who's flat-out leaving the game because of all the problems I mentioned so far. There might be an 1% that leaves the game due to flyers, but that's it - the rest of the problems is something only Niantic can solve. For the time being, however, flyers are pretty much something Niantic asked for. I mean, EX Raids? Invitations? Raids that have to be attended at a specific time and date? Who even is GO supposed to be for? Kids who can't afford the cash to shell out for virtual Pokécoins? Adults who have a job and during this time of recession can't afford to neglet for the sake of a piece of software they're not even guaranteed to get?! (Heck, outside of GO, the usual "holy grail" treatment Event Pokémon get has kept Codejunkies and the like afloat so far!)
I should be grateful, even kneeling according to what many of you might be thinking at the moment, for the fact there's a free Pokémon game out there for all smartphone owners to enjoy. However, by calling it "a free Pokémon game", I've already put together two wrong statements - or, as they should be called, lies.

[EDIT: And no, in case you're wondering, "why don't you just quit?" is not a good counterpoint, nor is it a solution to the problem.]