Pokemon Go Set to Receive Its Biggest Update Since Launch, Niantic Confirms

Pokemon Go is about to receive its biggest update since launch as Niantic has reportedly confirmed that 'Generation 2' Pokemon are making their way to the game later this week. The update is slated to bring along over 80 new Pokemon to the augmented-reality game, which Niantic will hope will bring back players who left Pokemon Go due to lack of fresh content.

Niantic has confirmed that the Pokemon Go update will be coming "later this week" and that the 80 new Generation 2 Pokemon mentioned by company will be discoverable as soon as the update becomes live, as per a report by TechCrunch. Further, the newly added Pokemon with the upcoming update will all be discoverable "in the wild" unlike the Pokemon that were added in December and were available from just 'eggs' inside the game.

Some of the other features that have been confirmed by the company to be coming with this update include new evolution items, two new types of berries called Nanab and Pinap, new avatar items, and a new "encounter gameplay", as per the report. Some readers might point out that 'Generation 2' originally added 100 Pokemon, not 80, but as 8 of the remaining 20 are evolutions of the earlier Pokemon, they are already in the game, TechCrunch highlights. The remaining 12 Pokemon might have some Pokemon that require evolution items and are therefore not discoverable in the wild, it added. The remaining Pokemon are likely to be new generation's "Legendary" Pokemon.

Notably, player-versus-player battles have still not been confirmed to be coming to the game with the upcoming update and might be eventually added later by the company.

It is hard to expect that the new Pokemon Go update will bring the same kind of excitement that was generated at the game's launch but even if it brings back some proportion of the old users, it should be considered a success by Niantic.