There is every reason for 'Pokemon GO' players to be happy right now. There are new features such as Raid Battles and newly revamped gym system. More importantly, the mobile game has just turned a year old.
However, there are certain new features that 'Pokemon GO' players will have to wait a bit more for. In fact, it was the very own CEO of Niantic John Hanke who confirmed this disappointing news. Here is what it is all about in a nutshell.
The studio just had to do some rebuilding
A couple of months back, the studio revealed that two more features will be added to the game.
These are PvP and Trading, both of which came from community feedbacks and opinions. The developers iterated that, in one way or another, these features should have arrived on or before the game's anniversary event. Alas, this did not happen and players will not even see these soon. Fortunately, Hanke himself explained why such move happened.
In an interview with The Verge, Hanke explained that in terms of developing new systems and/or features for 'Pokemon GO', they are six months behind. Meaning to say they would require at least six months to get back into the fold and develop the promised features. Hanke said that he understood the frustration from players, but they were limited by the size of their team, which had to be divided in order to cover every development aspect.
Why the delay had to be implemented
Hanke admitted that, between November and December, the team were busy "rebuilding and rewiring infrastructure" just to keep 'Pokemon GO' running. This included the efforts in creating and improving the game's anti-cheat system, considering the damage done by cheaters and/or exploiters. "We had to redirect a substantial portion of the engineering team to work on infrastructure versus new features," he said.
With the release of Raid Battles and a new gym system, Niantic decided to postpone the development of new features.
Niantic's CEO further explained that the company was limited by the resources they currently have, one of which is manpower. Hanke said that had they have a bigger team, developing new features for 'Pokemon GO' will not be an issue.
But since they have to be reasonable with what they have, they decided to push through with the most substantial features: Raid Battles and gym system. Still, this should be a plus in the community, as the studio openly admitted their shortcomings.
