This year, Niantic apparently plans a big celebration to take place in Germany. Over 100,000 visitors are expected and it could be related to Pokémon GO.
During a conference in Berlin, Niantic talked about upcoming features of Pokémon GO and a big event that is supposed to take place this year. The information comes from a Reddit user who attended the conference and shared the content.
Niantic Event in Germany
On March 28, a Hub:Raum 5G conference took place in Berlin, where the 5th generation of mobile communications (5G) was discussed. Alongside other participants such as Telekom, Omar H. Téllez (Vice President Business Development & Partnerships at Niantic) and Michael T. Jones (AR Innovation, Strategic Advisor at Niantic) were also present as speakers.
On that day, Téllez and Jones talked about “AR 2.0 meets 5G”. The mobile network is always an important point for Pokémon GO players and developers. They mentioned that the previous GO Fest from the summer of 2017 did not go well. In collaboration with mobile network providers present at the conference, such issues could be avoided in the future.
According to Reddit user thw31416 (with Reddit translation by SirPaulchen), the following information was announced at the conference:
- Niantic will host a large event in Dortmund in the summer of 2018. They expect 100,000 participants. It was not directly stated that the event is related to Pokémon GO. It could also be an event for the new Harry Potter game – But it didn’t sound like that during the conference.
- They emphasized that the development of new features for Pokémon GO has just begun. The many users were the reason that in the first 1.5 years, things like bug fixes were more important.
- Spoofing: Niantic is trying everything to ban spoofers. In the future, algorithms and also (if legally possible) information from the providers will be used.
- After their talk, the two also discussed the following topics outside of the actual presentation. It is not known whether these are already in development or are just ideas. So consider the following information with this knowledge in mind.
- Ingame communication: They are considering direct chats at certain locations.
- Transfer: Transfer of items like potions in the game or via social media. The trading of Pokémon was not mentioned.
- Personalized Pokémon encounters: Pokémon missing in trainers’ PokéDex can suddenly appear nearby – there would be a notification for that. This Pokémon would then only be available to the respective player. If these notifications are ignored, they occur less frequently, so that players do not feel disturbed by them.
- 5G localization: In the (very) long term, they would like to rely on the 5G network instead of GPS to retrieve locations. This would also save battery, as smartphones need to connect to the cell towers anyway.
- Niantic location in Germany: Niantic is also planning to open an office in Germany and is looking for staff. It is likely that there will be more Pokémon GO events in Germany in the future.
Keep in mind that some of these features may still be far in the future. These are plans that Niantic did not share directly with the Pokémon GO community through the usual notification process.
The mentioned event for 2018 reminds many trainers of the GO Fest, which would fit the summer season. It took place last year and brought Articuno and Lugia as rewards. But during the fest, a lot went wrong.
