Pokemon Go's 'Nearby' tracking feature begins working outside San Francisco

Pokemon Go players, those that are still playing, that is, might recall back in the heyday of the app's success, developer Niantic released an update with a new "Nearby" tool for identifying which creatures were near their location. This was meant to be a replacement for the previous version, which relied on footprints, and was essentially broken upon the game's launch. Well, until now, that new Nearby tracking tool has been limited to just San Francisco, but that's finally changing.

The good news is that the Pokemon tracking tool is coming to other cities, but the bad news is that it's a very small number of locations. The developers say the new Nearby feature is currently available in the full San Francisco Bay area, the state of Arizona, and the city of Seattle. There's no mention of if or when it might rollout to more locations, and, oddly enough, there's no specifics given about exact places within Arizona.

It may not be much in terms of an expansion, especially coming a full three months after the updated tracker was first released, but at least it's a sign that Niantic hasn't given up on addressing one of the problematic features of Pokemon Go.

The goal of the app's tracker is to help players identify which Pokemon are nearby, and roughly in which direction they go in order to find them. Without this, the game is basically played by wandering around aimlessly and hoping to come across a Pokemon.

While the tracker that was included when the game launched used footprint icons to convey how close a player was to a Pokemon, this new version instead shows the PokeStop that a certain Pokemon is close to. Unfortunately, for Pokemon that aren't near any PokeStops, it's still just a game of walking in a random direction and hoping for the best.

SOURCE Pokemon Go/Facebook