Pokemon GO Halloween just got REAL (Gen 3 real)
This morning the latest build of Pokemon GO for Android revealed a collection of changes just before Halloween. This set of changes falls in the category of "oh my goodness this could mean something big" – with regard to the third full generation of Pokemon in the game. An in-game data update just like the one we're seeing today occurred just days before the full release of Pokemon GO's Gen 2.
The Codes
The codes consist of updates to the already-entered set of Gen 3 Pokemon specs. Each Pokemon is there – and has been for a while – but until they get fully filled out, they're only in the code. Today the most recent build for the game revealed that one of the final pieces to the puzzle was set in place: sex ratios.
Every Pokemon from Treeko (252) to Deoxys (386) now has its gender spawn percentage in place. For some, like Rayquaza, Jiachi, and Groudon, that simply means there's a "1.0" after its entry for "genderless_percent". For most other Pokemon, "male_percent" and "female_percent" are set to 0.5 (50%) each.
The last time this sort of update happened, the release of the bulk of the new generation of Pokemon was released the same day. I do not expect Niantic to release the entirety of Gen 3 today – but you never know! There wasn't one whole heck of a lot of warning given by Niantic for Gen 2's release, either.
Which Pokemon are coming first?
The codes do not lie – but in this case, the codes also tell us very little about what's to come. We can count on the codes being nearly filled out right before a release for some Pokemon, but things may have changed over the past year. It could be that Niantic is more in the groove of doing these updates now, and is preparing for the release of just a few Pokemon by updating nearly all of their codes at once.
REMEMBER: Pokemon GO will get 3 major updates this year
To get them prepared for their own individual releases, Niantic may be submitting nearly the entirety of the codes for each unique Pokemon so that they're ready to roll when each unique Pokemon is called upon to spawn for the first time.
As such, there's really no perfect way to guess which Pokemon are coming first. On the other hand, we DO know that there are SOME Pokemon that'll be around by Halloween for sure. These Pokemon can be found in our Witch Hat Pikachu article from earlier this week – we've got the list!