Phenomenal Success Of ‘Pokemon GO’ Delays Launch Of PvP & Legendaries To Summer

Even if “Pokemon GO” has been downloaded 650 million times and has 65 million active players around the world, keeping gamers interested is a challenge that Niantic has to hurdle. Based on the company’s learnings with “Ingress,” the game can be sustained if the developers create social interaction among players. Niantic will release in summer player-versus-player battles and the Legendaries.

Mathieu de Fayet, the vice president of strategic partnerships at Niantic, says the game developer initially planned to go live with these two features. However, it delayed the roll out of the PvP and Legendaries to summer in the northern hemisphere because of “Pokemon GO’s” phenomenal success, VG247 reports.

He says the features will provide more value to the choice of the teams. Eurogamer points out that it is not the first time that reports of these gameplay ideas, requested by a lot of “Pokemon GO” players, have surfaced. Last week, Niantic dropped hints of the legendary Pokemon when it posted, “This summer will be legendary.” However, it is the first time there is confirmation of its release schedule.

In 2016, Articuno, the legendary bird, was seen in the roster of some players. However, Niantic revoked it. After the game developer noticed some Legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when it should not have, Niantic corrected the situation. It revoked the Legendary monsters from the accounts of the “Pokemon GO” trainers to preserve the popular game’s integrity and to be fair to other players.

Besides what’s coming in summer to “Pokemon GO,” de Fayet discloses  that because of the partnership that Niantic entered into with corporate sponsors such as McDonald’s Japan, it earned 50 cents per visitor. The deal involves making the 3,000 McDonald’s in Japan into gyms and PokeStops to bring in more customers to the fast food restaurant by an average of 2,000 people daily.