Next Pokemon GO Big Update is All About Gym Rework

Hanke just confirmed for the German news outlet “Wired” that Gym rework is the next major update coming to Pokémon GO. We speculated, we voted and now we know – it’s gym rework.

Here are the most important points from the interview:

Hanke said they had little time to innovate as they had to tackle real time problems with their technology and platform
Gen II is first update, three more coming
The next update is Gym system rework
he admits the current Gym system is incomplete
he admits that Gyms don’t work as well as they wanted them to
from Ingress they learned how common goals help communities get together
“We will rework this [gym] aspect of the game so that there will be more teamwork and people will get more incentive and reward for participating.”

As for the future updates in 2017, he hinted PvP and trading:

“How will it continue after the Arena update for 2017? “For the two releases that follow, we are pushing the most diverse features back and forth to define the final goals,” says Hanke. The developers at Niantic would think a lot about how players can trade monsters and fight against each other.”

He went on to discuss possible legendary birds and Mew/MewTwo events:

In addition, Niantic wants to finally deliver what many trainers have been waiting for since the first few weeks: the legendary Pokémon – Mewtwo, Mew and the three elemental birds assigned to the teams. “I can safely say we’ll see more of it this year,” says Hanke.

Hanke also touched on the problem of GPS spoofers, saying it’s not the players fault if they can use the tools that are publicly available to cheat. He confirmed they think it’s Niantics’ responsibility to tackle those issues and ensure a fair playing ground for everyone.

You can read the whole article in German here.