While trading hasn’t been officially announced yet for Pokemon Go , it’s clear that Niantic Labs is prioritizing the feature within the mobile game. Product manager Tatsuo Nomura said that they are “still trying to come up with an answer [to trading] that makes sense so it doesn’t kill the game. If we fail this, we can easily kill the game.” Trading has always been a large part of the Pokemon universe, from the video games to the card game.
There is a big part of the potential Pokemon Go trading feature that Niantic wants to recognize that shows how delicate this development process is. Nomura says, “We don’t want to just have that be an online game that you can just exchange virtually. You shouldn’t be able to exchange your Pokemon with someone who is 100 miles away from you… The person needs to be in your proximity.”
With its continual popularity, trading will bring another level of familiarity and gameplay to Pokemon Go . Since one of Niantic’s goal for the game is to bring people together, it also just makes sense to have localized trading for this game. Ash Ketchum wouldn’t have traded his Pokemon via a computer system, he would have traded in person. So should we!
Source: Polygon