Niantic on their plans for 2022 – what aspects of Pokemon GO will be improved?

Pokemon Go

The creators of Pokemon GO have commented on what they are planning for the rest of 2022.


Pokemon GO is a game that is constantly evolving and has been surprising its players for several years with new functions, next generations of creatures, events and more. The creators want their title to be consistently attractive to fans, but also attract brand new players who have not yet tried catching Pokemon in the real world.

2022 is to be really fruitful for Pokemon GO. Niantic announced that the studio is working on various interesting features that will be introduced or expanded (if they already exist in the game) in the coming months.

Plans for 2022 in Pokemon GO

An entry has appeared on the official website of Pokemon GO in which the game developers talk about their plans for the coming months.

We have some exciting plans for Pokémon GO in 2022, and we want to take a moment to give you a peek at some of what we’re working on.

Throughout the upcoming year, we’ll be focusing our efforts on improving Pokémon GO and bringing fun, exciting updates to Trainers around the world. At Niantic, our hope is to evolve our games and experiences along three unique pillars.

  • Real-world social interaction
  • Exercise
  • Exploration

These categories have always been central to our design approach, but implementing ideas based on them has been challenging over the past two years. Now, however, we’d like to share some of the initiatives our team is hard at work on.

The creators emphasized that their words can be treated as an announcement and guide for the game in the coming months. As you know, creating games requires a lot of work and sometimes unforeseen situations can occur, so you have to take into account that your studio’s plans may change.

Niantic also emphasized that in the meantime, various events and surprises will appear in Pokemon GO that will not be mentioned today.

With all that said, here are some of the projects our teams have been working on.

Continuing global events with Pokémon GO Tour: After your enthusiastic response to Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto last year, we’re bringing the next iteration — Pokémon GO Tour: Johto — to Trainers on February 26 and 27, 2022. This year, Trainers around the world will be able to play wherever they are, and Trainers in Monterrey, Mexico, or Kaohsiung, Taiwan, will be able to participate in live events. Some of the new features for this year’s Pokémon GO Tour include GO Gym Trainers—each of which is inspired by a contest-winning Trainer from our community—that you’ll be able to opt in or out of battling once you’ve faced a certain number of them. This way, you’ll be able to choose between engaging in more challenging battles or shifting your focus toward other features of the event. On top of that, there’s new Masterwork Research featuring Apex Shadow Pokémon.

GO Battle League improvements: First of all, we’d like to sincerely thank you all for your support of the GO Battle League! We’re always working on refining the experience, and we’re currently prioritizing a number of updates and improvements—including urgent bug fixes—that we’ll share more about in an upcoming Dev Diary. Stay tuned!

Postcard Update: We’re so happy to see you all enjoying the new Postcard Book feature! We’re working on adding additional functionality, like notifications, sticker saving, an expanded Gift maximum, new Postcard sorting methods, and new Postcard notes!

Seasonal Update: We were happy to see that Trainers enjoyed both Hoopa’s mischief and the mystery of the door Professor Willow discovered. In the coming Season, we’re looking forward to sharing several seasonal Special Research stories with you, with a focus on smaller-scale adventures. Stay tuned for more details on what else we have in store for the next Season!

Community Day Update: The last two years have been hard on us all, and we are continually exploring ways to enhance the sense of community our Trainers feel around the world.

Our first ever Community Day Classic was one such experiment, and we’ve also been testing community-hosted events on a smaller scale. We will continue to explore the concept of Community Day to keep our events fresh and exciting.

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