niantic

After teasing trainer battles for Pokemon GO last week, Niantic has now detailed how the feature will work. Trainer battles, of course, are an integral part of the mainline Pokemon games, and they've been noticeably absent from Pokemon GO ever since the game launched back in 2016. Though they're finally coming to Pokemon GO, they're going to be a bit different from what seasoned Pokemon veterans are used to when they arrive.

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Though Pokemon GO seemingly took over the world when it released, it launched missing a few core features from the Pokemon series. One of them, trading, was added to the game earlier this year, and Niantic is signaling the arrival of another major feature: trainer battles. To that, we simply say it's about time.

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It's been a little more than a year since Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was first revealed. In that year, we haven't really heard much at all, as Niantic has been mostly silent on the game. Today, that all changed, with Niantic giving us a new teaser trailer for Wizards Unite and giving us a better idea of when it'll arrive.

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Pokemon GO might be the game that finally made it money, but Niantic Labs’s real groundbreaking work was on Ingress, perhaps the first worldwide “augmented reality” mobile game. It was a hit for a small niche market when it launched in 2012, a market that may have felt a bit abandoned when Niantic turned its eyes on Pokemon GO. The company is now going back to its roots to take the lessons from both of its games to breathe new life into the game. Welcome to Ingress Prime.

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During its peak, Pokemon GO has been credited for getting people off their butts and on their feet and walking around, sometimes even walking into things, unfortunately. But how much walking and activity did Pokemon GO really produce. Unfortunately, there’s really no way to get that past data and can only get it directly from tracking data from smartwatches or smartphones. To fix that, Niantic Labs is launching a new feature called Adventure Sync that records our steps, syncs with Apple and Android phones, and hatches eggs.

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Some might contest branding Pokemon GO as an augmented reality game. Yes, it does use your real-world location and, at least, can at least use streets and building structures in maps. But the Pokemon themselves look more like stickers superimposed on the real world when you enable AR mode. Pokemon GO’s AR+ mode took care of that last year and it’s now finally available for Android smartphones. Provided yours is one of the few dozen that supports the ARCore framework.

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Pokemon GO is still going strong but, like any game, it has its periods of ups and downs. The game might soon be experiencing another spurt of popularity now that developer Niantic Labs has confirmed what many players have been expecting since April. The game will soon be “moving” towards the Sinnoh region, though at a yet unannounced date. But more than just new Pokemon, the preparation for that next stage of the game will also be bringing in some subtle but big changes as well.

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Pokemon GO Halloween 2018 is nearly upon us, and today we're taking a peek at what's about to roll out. This year's event will come after the current madness that is Meltan. That's the Mythical (or is it Legendary?) Pokemon that's been appearing in Pokemon GO over the past week or so, always turning into Ditto whenever it was caught. This is easily one of the strangest tricks Niantic's played thus far on the Pokemon GO public, that's for certain.

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Today that folks at Niantic revealed the start time for PokeStop nominations in Pokemon GO. This is perhaps the most important update to the game since the beginning because of the amount of personal involvement players will have with Niantic directly. This update will allow users to submit locations for potential inclusion in the game as PokeStops, in a way that's far more direct than they've ever allowed in the past.

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While rooted devices may have security implications for owners themselves, they’re also seen as potential threats to one specific class of Android apps: online games. Rooted devices have the potential to install modified versions of the game that could, in theory, give players an unfair advantage. That’s why some developers, by default, prevent rooted devices from playing their games. While that may be understandable, Pokemon GO developer Niantic Labs is using a rather controversial method to do so.

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The time for Regirock in Pokemon GO is here! It's time to head down to your local favorite Raid Battle gym and take on the most rockiest of strange Legendary Pokemon from the Hoenn region in Regirock. Yes Regirock, the third in a line of Hoenn-region legendaries is here, ready to rock and roll, and we're gonna let its secrets be know right here, right this minute.

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The mainline Pokemon games’ success can be boiled down to three core gameplay elements: collection, trading, and battling. Pokemon GO, the real-world “AR” version of that franchise, started out with the first and, as of June this year, added the second. We’re still missing out on the last piece which developer Niantic Labs has long promised will come. There’s no precise date yet but Niantic is at least assuring players that the year won’t end without it.

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