Pokemon Go: Trading, PvP Battles Still 'on the Roadmap'

Trading and PvP battles are still in the cards for Pokemon Go.

Speaking to IGN in the wake of today’s Pokemon Go generation 3 and dynamic weather announcement, Niantic global product marketing lead Archit Bhargava explained that the team is always considering new features and how to prioritize them.

“Trading was mentioned in the initial launch trailer of the game, so that is definitely something that we want to get to at some point,” Bhargava told IGN. “I think the priority has always been, you know, what is the feature that we can launch now that we feel will get the community excited and energized. So we do continue to talk about some of the features that you mentioned, and they are on the roadmap. We just haven’t fully investigated those and talked about how would we want to bring those into Pokemon Go. So that is definitely something that we’re focused on.”

“December typically for us ends up being a big planning month, looking at the year ahead to plan for it, and start spec-ing out and thinking of how we want to bring these features to market. So they’re all in active discussion with the team right now,” he added.

As far as additional changes, when asked about increased storage limits or a higher level cap, Bhargava said, "we’re actively discussing that at the moment. It’s something that we ourselves as fans have requested on the product team and the marketing team. So the teams are actively looking into that."

“For now, though, we thought it had been a while since the Pokemon from the Johto region came out, that was in February," he added. "So we definitely felt the need to bring out the Hoenn region Pokemon, so that became the focus, and dynamic weather came through that. So that’s the focus now and we definitely want to get to those other features very soon.”

For more from Bhargava as well as product manager Matt Slemon, read our interview about generation 3 Pokemon and dynamic weather in Pokemon Go.

Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and currently has 251 Pokemon in his Pokedex. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter.