Pokémon Go Trading and Real-Time Player Battles Coming Soon, Says Niantic

Pokémon Go fans waiting for a new reason to resume their engagement with the hit augmented reality title may have reason to cheer. According to GeekWebGuides sister site TouchArcade, two features that were sorely missing in the game's original incarnation – real-time player battles and Pokémon trading – are said to be coming "soon".

John Hanke, founder and CEO of Pokémon Go developer Niantic, revealed in an interview that both co-operative trading and player vs player battles are in the works, although their introduction is likely to be staggered via a series of updates, in what he called "an abbreviated form".

The omission of the two features around launch time was said to be down to the daunting server issues the company experienced shortly after the debut of Pokémon Go last summer. Hanke revealed that if the company hadn't been so busy trying to keep the servers online, at least one of the features would likely have been in version 1 of the game.

"It’s going to be done soon," Hanke told Waypoint. "It is what it is. I'll take the massive wave of hysteria we enjoyed, and just deal with the fact that it's caused us to take a bit longer to get the rest of the features up. We're really happy to make our users happy."