Tsunekazu Ishihara, President of The Pokemon Company, spoke to The Wall Street Journal (pay wall) and mentioned that trainer battles and trading between trainers are planned features for Pokemon GO. The onus is on Niantic, developers of the popular mobile game, to implement them. He also understands that it’s not just a simple matter of wanting it.
“Battling is a category that we do best at Pokemon, after all,” Ishihara said. “[But] it’s important to really carefully consider any feature that may increase the difficulty and raise the barrier to entry for more casual users.”
The features, which I’m sure top most wish lists for Pokemon GO, will not be easy to implement. For proof, just look at how difficult the task of tracking of Pokemon has been for Niantic. Still, you have to figure that any new feature they introduce will add a layer of complexity to maintaining the game. After the issues they’ve ha with supporting the Pokemon GO Plus, I’m sure they’re a bit hesitant to pile on more features.
For his part, Ishihara sounds like a man who was surprised by just how popular the game became. “I feel like the reaction we saw was 10 times or even 100 times bigger than we expected.”
The reaction has surprised Nintendo as well. Sales of the Nintendo 3DS and 2DS have skyrocketed since the release of Pokemon GO, so much so that the 3DS was the best-selling video game system for July 2016. Sales of Pokemon games for the handheld devices have also grown appreciably during the same period.
