Pokemon-Go founder gives hints to the future of the game

Less than a month from its launch, Pokemon Go has been a huge hit.

From kids and adults to professionals and cops – people are playing ‘Pokémon Go’ together in the streets.

Just walk around any neighborhood, any market place in America and you will witness the immense popularity and social impact of this game.

Niantic disclosed that, only within the last two days, Pokemon Go is installed on 5.6% of all Android devices in the United States. And, on an average users are spending double the amount of time playing Pokemon Go than they spend on popular apps like Snapchat.

 Its popularity can be measured by the fact that, within 20 days of launch, Pokemon Go is about to surpass Twitter in the number of daily active users (through Android).

At the Comic-con 2016 at San Diego (on Sunday), Pokemon Go emerged as the undeniable phenomenon of this year. Over 6000 Pokemon Go fans had reached there to cheer for Niantic. John Hanke, CEO and founder of Niantic was originally scheduled to appear at a tiny presentation panel which holds upto 480 people. But after Pokemon Go took the country by storm, it was obvious that a huge panel would be required. So, the event moved to the hangar-sized Hall H, to hold between 6000-7000 people.

John Hanke, Niantic's CEO and founder, and Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick addressed to the crowd together. Hanke discussed the performance of game over the past two weeks, essentially highlighting their efforts on the server issues. He also touched briefly on introducing new generations of creatures in the future and the other upgrades under process.

He said, “The game is really an excuse to go outside, see your city, and have fun with other people. Niantic is interested in features that make people get out of the house.”

Pokemon Go is changing the definition of playing games. Here, instead of sitting on the couch, you are physically exploring the world around you. No need for expensive gaming consoles or powerful PCs and buying high-tech VR headsets. Just an android phone with compatible configuration beats the ultimate gaming experiences like playing strategy games, racing games, casino games, rummy games, pattern games. 

With these upgrades to come, Pokemon Go experience will only get better:

1. Pokémon Go will add customizable pokéstops

Hanke is personally more interested in making pokéstops a bigger part of the game. He mentioned that, pokéstops frequently have lures placed at them, and it would be interesting to let players modify a pokéstop's function in different ways.

He said, “It would be a great idea to acquire an object that changes the function of a pokéstop and gives it a new ability. For example: turning them into healing pokécenters.”

There was no commitment of dates of launch for the new features. Hanke said, "We are currently working really hard to keep the servers up and running, fix the existing glitches and continue the worldwide rollout. Adding new features is also a priority, but it is going to take a little longer."

2. Adding new pokemon to the game

Hanke mentioned that, ‘beyond the first generation pokemons, there are some others that may make their way into our universe. We are looking forward to finding interesting ways to make that happen in the coming months.”

A rumor had spread in the crowd about Niantic letting players capture a rare pokemon during the event. And when Hanke said that, he is sorry for ‘having no new pokemon today,’ people erupted, making their disappointment known. 

Apart from this particular moment of overreaction from crowd, it was otherwise a thoughtful panel.

3. Leaders for Team Mystic, Team Valor and Team Instinct revealed

Hanke also used the Comin-Con panel to introduce the team Leaders: Candela, Blanche and Spark for Team Valor, Team Mystic and Team Instinct respectively.

In addition to this, he also established the rumored way of confirming an Eevee evolution by naming the little critter after one of the Eevee brothers from the Pokemon cartoon. This involves naming the Eevee either Sparky, Rainer or Pyro before evolving it to get Jolteon, Vaporeon or Flareon, respectively.

What Hanke did not talk about was the multiplayer features and high battery usage.

These are two major functionalities that are very important for the handheld games.

Even though Pokemon Go drains the phone battery really fast, it only seems like an early technological hurdle. All the Augmented Reality games have issues with battery life that they need to overcome fast.

Niantic will have to launch the missing multiplayer capabilities as well in order to make the game popular multiple folds. This will let the players battle with their real life friends or even trade with them. The original trailer also suggested that such multiplayer features could come eventually to the game but there was no mention of this in the Cosmic-Con event on Sunday.