You may recall our coverage on GamesBeat’s recent interview with Niantic, where it went over several aspects of its, Nintendo’s, and Pokémon’s upcoming mobile game, Pokémon GO. In this interview, it touched on the encounter rate of Pokémon as well as trading, acquiring other Pokémon, and battling.
However, there is one major feature of the main Pokémon games that was mentioned in the interview that we haven’t gone over yet. If you guessing it’s Pokémon Gyms, you’re right.
Many fans have been wondering, with the ability to capture Pokémon and trade with other players like in the main games, if there’s going to be some kind of endgame; other than just catching them all, is there going to be a goal to work towards? In the video games, that goal is obviously to beat all eight Gyms and conquer the Elite Four. How amazing would it be if we got to do that ourselves, in the real world?
John Hanke and Mike Quigley have officially confirmed through their interview that Pokémon Gyms are included within the mobile game. However, they’ve made it clear that the goal is to train your Pokémon and work towards battling and defeating Pokémon Gyms, which means that coming across a Gym is going to be a little rarer.
Hanke: “Our goal is to make it so you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon. It may not be the most rare Pokémon in the world, but there’ll be a population of Pokémon living near all our players. Gyms will be a bit more rare. You want to find gyms so you can level up your Pokémon and battle there, so it will take a little more effort to get there.”
Don’t let that rarity scare you! The two have also confirmed that even for people living in smaller areas, you’ll still be able to find what you’re looking for. They’ve cited their success with Ingress, their other popular mobile game that’s also location-based.
With this confirmation, it really seems like Niantic is trying for the most authentic “Pokémon in real life” feeling it can get. Keep your eyes out for more details as we approach the release of Pokémon GO sometime in 2016!
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Written by George Comatas
As a wannabe social media personality and professional in the world of sarcasm, George does his best to always adapt to the changing world around him. He considers himself a maverick: a true-to-heart gamer with the mind of a pop star. Whether this makes him revolutionary or a setback, he's yet to find out. But one thing’s for sure; he's one-of-a-kind.
