COMIC-CON 2016: 5 THINGS WE LEARNED ABOUT POKEMON GO

Pokemon Go took over the massive Hall H at Comic-Con today, a venue upgrade thanks to the unbelievable successthe app has seen so far. John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, took the stage to discuss the game and what we can expect for the future.

While we didn’t get any concrete updates on Mewtwo, the Legendary Birds and the game’s other missing Pokemon, we did learn a lot about Niantic’s current focus, plus which features might be headed to the game once it’s available worldwide and servers are stable.

Team Leaders

The leaders of Team Mystic, Team Valor, and Team Instinct have been revealed! Niantic showed off Blanche, Candela, and Spark, the leaders of each respective team.

We don’t know exactly how these three trainers will communicate with the player just yet, but Hanke suggested they’ll give the player advice and will be popping up in a number of ways.

The leaders weren’t quite ready for the launch of the game, but hopefully we’ll find out more soon.

Big new features are being considered

Get ready to expand your Pokedex! Trading and more Pokemon are coming to Pokemon Go. Niantic says they expect to support Pokemon Go for months and years, and teased that there “are probably some Pokemon that will find their way into our universe” even beyond the current original set of 150.

Hanke also praised the idea of trading in the core Pokemon games as “a great social thing” and said it’s something Niantic is working on bringing to Pokemon Go. The team is also looking into customizing Pokestops, such as acquiring an object that will change the Pokestop’s functionality, and maybe even Pokemon Centers.

During a Q&A, the idea of breeding in the game also came up, which Hanke called a “great suggestion” that has been discussed among the team, though it hasn’t been confirmed as an upcoming feature.

While these features would be nice, Hanke stressed that players shouldn’t get excited just yet, as the current focus is ensuring server stability and making sure Pokemon Go is available worldwide.

Hanke said that only one tenth of the team’s ideas when the app first started development are currently in the game.

Some Easter Eggs haven't been found

Pokemon Go Cheat for Choosing Eevee Evolutions

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There are still secrets hidden inside of Pokemon Go! In reference to the Eevee naming trick to make sure you get the right evolution, Hanke hinted that there may be other Easter Eggs hidden within Pokemon Go.

“There might be some other Easter eggs buried in there yet to be discovered,” he teased.

Why Pokemon Go uses AR instead of VR

With so much buzz about VR lately, some may wonder why Pokemon Go focused so heavily on Augmented Reality rather than going down the headset route.

Hanke said VR “scares him a little bit” in that players close themselves off for those experiences, and we still don’t know what the consequences are for doing that. AR, on the other hand, has “a huge amount of potential” to make things more fun.

He added that, as a parent, he’s concerned about the time his children spend in front of a screen, and VR takes away from the face-to-face time he can spend with them.

Bugs are still being squashed

Pokemon Go: The Best Pokemon You Can Hatch from Eggs

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With server troubles abound, Hanke assured players that server stability is Niantic’s “top priority,” even before other features are added. There is a “laundry list” of things the team still wants to fix.

Hanke acknowledged the “three step” bug -- in which the game’s Nearby menu shows all Pokemon as three steps away -- and confirmed that the team is aware of it. He also assured fans that Niantic is exploring ways to prevent players from exploiting certain features, such as players who poach gyms immediately after they’ve been won.

“Your point is acknowledged. We should help you out. Thanks for pointing out that challenge,” Hanke promised one fan regarding poaching.

Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm, and Hanke described it as a “joyful, exciting, fun” experience to get together with other players. He described Niantic’s games as “a Comic-Con that’s happening in your neighborhood all the time” and said that while video games are traditionally played at home, now the technology can move around with us.

Hanke acknowledged the social and physical repurcussions of the app, talking about the huge physiological and mental benefits of walking around and meeting other players, though he did note Niantic didn’t want to advertise the game as a fitness app.

Best Pokemon to Defend Your Gym in Pokemon Go

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He said that connecting with people, going outside, and exploring are the actions that are going to help get us through the period we’re going through as a society -- “so share it.”

For much, much more on Pokemon Go, be sure to visit our Pokemon Go wiki guide, and find all of the news straight from Comic-Con in IGN’s San Diego Comic-Con 2016 hub.

Andrew is IGN's executive editor of news and is afraid he's going to seriously injure his feet from walking so much to hatch Pokemon. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter.

CONGRAT Pokemon Go release date update: Latest geo-block status in India, Nepal, Singapore, China and other Asian regions

It's been close to three weeks since augmented reality game Pokémon Go got released in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand and since then it has been rolled out in just 30 plus European regions and one country in Asia (Japan).

This apparently led to many curious gamers in Asia, including in India, to go for Pokémon Go's APK file available on internet and install it with fake billing address leading to crashes in official regions.

To contain the server requests, Pokemon Go makers Nintendo and Niantic geo-blocked many areas.

To help provide real-time Pokémon Go release details and local server availability, Reddit has constituted a dedicated team to keep track on all regions, which are yet to get the official version of the game.

As per Reddit page, Pokémon Go has finally landed in France on both Android Google Play and Apple app stores.

Later today, Pokemon Go co-creator John Hanke is scheduled host a discussion panel at 

the on-going San Diego Comic-Con 2016, Hall H.

Rumour has it that Hanke will announce a new legendary Pokemon on Sunday and also shed some light on the release date details of the augmented reality game in global regions.

"John Hanke, founder of Niantic and pioneer of real world gaming, and host Chris Hardwick will discuss the past, present and future of extending games beyond the screen and re-imagining reality through the lens of Ingress and Pokémon GO," says the Comic Con 2016 schedule page.

The panel discussion was supposed to happen on July 22, but got postponed to July 24 for need of more space. It has been moved to a bigger auditorium in Hall H to accomodate more gaming fans.

Pokemon Go released in FrancePokemon Go official page via Twitter

Latest update on Geo-blocks status in Asia:

On Friday, several Indian cities including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune were geo-blocked.

As per the latest Reddit report, geo-block has been partially lifted in India. Pokemon Go servers are said to be available for access in northern and western regions.

Players in Uttar Pradesh (Agra), Madhya Pradesh(Jabalpur), Karnataka (Dharwad and Mangaluru), Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat have confirmed (via Reddit) to have got access to the Pokémon Go servers. However, there seems to be less Pokestops and Gyms in theses regions.

In South India, we independently cross checked with three Pokémon Go players in Bengaluru; only two confirmed us to have got connection to Pokemon Go online, while other player got negative response from the server.

We believe that the server access is still limited to few Indian cities in the north and west parts of India.

As far as other Asian regions are concerned, server was said to accessible in Brunei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, but the maps were empty, Reddit thread (24/7) said.

Whereas, the Maldives region has been geoblocked.

On the bright side, geo-block has been lifted in select regions of Sri Lanka, Nepal (Butwal and Nepalgunj), Indonesia (Jayapura and Papua), China (Liaoning and Xinjiang), said readers in the Reddit's comment section.

How to play Pokemon Go:

For those unaware, Pokemon Go makes use of the smartphone's camera and GPS location feature to project virtual Pokemon on the screen. Players just have to go to designated locations to catch them and train in the Gym. If the players want to catch more Pokemons and consumable items in the game, they have to look for PokeStops. Pokemons can also be transferred to Professor Willow, who will reward players with candies.

Pokemon Centers Will Be Added in Future Pokemon Go Updates

During Pokemon Go's Hall H presentation at SDCC, Niantic Labs CEO confirmed that players would be able to transform PokeStops into Pokemon Centers in a future update of Pokemon Go. In the Pokemon universe, Pokemon Centers are hospitals that players visit to heal their Pokemon.  

According to Hanke, they want to eventually add customization options to PokeStops, which will encourage players to visit different PokeStops. Other customization options weren't elaborated on, but they probably include training dojos or trading centers or even a Day Care Center to raise Pokemon. 

It was mentioned that Pokemon training was top on Niantic's list of features they want to add to Pokemon Go, so it's possible that Niantic will kill two birds with one stone. 

Be sure to follow our live coverage of the SDCC Pokemon Go panel here for more news! 

POKÉMON GO PROMISED TRADING AND OTHER UPDATES AT SDCC

As San Diego Comic-Con serves as the veritable mecca of geek culture, it’s only natural that this year’s fest should close out with a panel devoted to what is perhaps the biggest thing to hit the nerding world in 2016: Pokémon GO. The exhibit packed Hall H with aspiring PokéMasters aching to glean a few tips from Niantic Labs’ head John Hanke, who did not disappoint. Well, with the exception of one sizeable letdown. But rest assured, useful pointers and exciting news alike were to be heard.

Chatting with our own Chris Hardwick, Hanke confirmed what many of us already knew: different types of Pokémon inhabit different parts of our real world, and—to some degree—correlate logically with their surroundings’ natural environment. The most obvious example of this is the prevalence of water-type Pokémon in close range to actual bodies of water. (I can confirm, living right on the bank of New York City’s East River, that we’ve got a boatload of Krabbys roaming about.)

Hanke did drop a few more surprising pearls of wisdom, however, as he insisted that several Easter eggs lurk about the world Pokémon GO that no active players have yet to find. (You’d think ONE of the millions of us would have nabbed these by now, right? Come on, guys.) Especially notable among these hidden gems is one involving Eevee, pertinent to the secret behind controlling the direction of its evolution into either Flareon, Jolteon, or Vaporeon. According to Hanke, nobody has mastered this hack just yet, though we’ve certainly heard tell of a few theories on how to master this task.

Eventually, Hanke found his way to the good news yet to grace the game. In addition to toiling over fixing the three-step glitch—the very same that has been afflicting my gameplay, so I’ll thank them to hurry up on this!—Niantic is working on adding a few additional functions to Pokémon GO.

First off, the customization of PokéStops for operation among friends and teammates. Secondly, the addition of new, rare types of Pokémon that have thus far been absent from the game—something we’ve all been looking forward to for sure. Additionally, the customizing PokéStops thing will give you the ability to mod PokéStops.

Next, Team Leaders—captains of Teams Valor, Mystic, and Instinct, who may operate a bit like the gym leaders we knew in the traditional Pokémon games. Valor will be led by a character named Candela, Mystic by Blanche, and Instinct by Spark.

Finally, and perhaps most exciting of all: The option to trade Pokémon will soon be implemented into Pokémon GO. No longer will you have to scrape together airfare to snag those rare species exclusive to Myanmar; just make a Burmese friend via the good graces of Reddit, and you’ll have your hands on your desired type in no time!

The one big disappointment came with the revelation that no legendary Pokémon would be set loose in Hall H. Still, enough good news was shared to keep us gaming and looking forward to updates.

Pokemon GO San Diego Comic-Con Panel Live

The Pokémon GO panel at San Diego Comic-Con got bumped up to Hall H after the game became a global phenomenon seemingly overnight. John Hanke, head of Niantic came to the 4,000 capacity room with host Chris Hardwick to talk about the game - and promised some announcements at the start of the panel.

Hanke started by talking about the founding of Niantic - he and the programmers there are actually the people who built Google Earth. He wanted then to continue to explore maps and the world around them, and how it could be applied to gaming.

They went with AR instead of a VR experience because it’s “a way to enhance things that we already do, make everything more fun and add a little more happiness and joy and intrigue to life,” Hanke said. He’s encouraged by how the game is bringing people together, and that friends are playing together and even making new friends through the game.

They started with Ingress, a game that is similar, and recently had an event for that in Tokyo with 14,000 people in attendance.

"It was a really strange experiment," Hanke said of Ingress. They built it while they were still at google, before spinning out. "It was our first run at building a game like this. The idea was let's see what works, prove the platform and technology, then use that to build more games. We started looking at how we could bring more people in on the secret when it worked, and that's how we came to Pokemon GO.

Hardwick talked about going to the Griffith Observatory and seeing people of all ages and types playing the game, then talked about the way the Pokemon actually spawn.

"Yeah, we try to spawn the Pokemon based on where they'd actually exist in the real world," Hanke said. Water Pokemon spawn near water, for example.

Hanke declined to give numbers on their users, but "we weren't provisioned for what happened." They added servers right away, but that then added some bugs, and it was difficult to keep up.

Hardwick said that when he met Hanke yesterday, a Pikachu showed up, and he “spent the first ten minutes” of their rehearsal catching it.

Moving back to the idea that walking around is good for you, Hanke was happy that they could "roll that in" and make it a part of their fun product. "I have a ten year old who loves Minecraft, like any ten year-old. But he's begging his mom to go on 5km and 10km walks to hatch his eggs, so my wife is happy about it!"

A Now This video about how a children's hospital at University of Michigan is using the game to help get kids into physical therapy. "Obviously we're not doctors and didn't think about it from that point of view. From the perspective of us at Niantic and the team, the thing that keeps us working is to hear back stories like that."

Hanke encouraged fans to keep tweeting about it and sharing their experiences with Niantic and create a "positive cycle" to "get us as a society through the stuff that we're going through right now."

"There are a certain set of Pokemon in the game right now. There are some rare ones that haven't showed up yet that will be showing up. And there are some other ones in the universe, it's something we're excited about continuing with in the coming years," Hanke said.

"Trading is not in Pokemon GO today, but it's something we're working on bringing to the product. Don't get too excited - we need to make sure we can keep the servers up first!"

Hanke also teased that there is other functionality they want to bring to the game, including new Poke Stop customizations, including hospitals and other capabilities.

"We have probably a tenth of the ideas we had when we kicked this project off two years ago in the initial release."

Hanke confirmed the Eevee name hack, where if you name it properly you can control how it evolves. "There might be a few other Easter Eggs in there that have yet to be discovered, as well," he teased.

Hanke loves the PokeWalks that have been going on - one in San Francisco had 9,000 RSVPs to it. "Our servers were down part of that day and our team worked non stop to make sure they were up again in time for that."

Fan Q&A started and the first question was whether there could be Breeding in the game. "Interesting idea - we've not been working on it, but there has been some discussion about it."

Training update? "We said we're gonna do it, we teased it, but he wants the date! He's got a future as a project manager," Hanke said of the small giggling child who asked point blank about it. "We don't have an exact date, but it's at the top of our priority list."

Do the legendary birds have something to do with the three teams? "Yeah, they're kinda aligned with the teams, and we might have something to announce about the teams soon."

A Team Valor fan asked about whether Legendary Pokemon would be showing up at events like today, and got made fun of by Hardwick for his team. "If I could summon a Pokemon for you here right now, I would," Hanke said. "We're working hard. We haven't rolled the game out everywhere yet, we're adding countries every day. We're gonna get there, but there's no new Pokemon here today."

Hanke said they acknowledge the Gym poaching that's happening, and it's on the list of things they want to fix. The three step bug, too, "We've heard about it on the interwebs. We're aware of that one."

"We're debuting for you the leadership of Team Mystic," and her name is Blanche.

The leader of Team Instinct is a guy named Spark.

Team Valor's leader is a girl named Candela.

They'll be in the game soon, dispensing advice and "you'll be hearing from them in a variety of ways," Hanke said.

"Always spin, use the lucky eggs, and keep in mind the spirit of the game," Hanke said as closing words.

The CEO behind Pokémon Go just dropped some big hints to the future of the game

Niantic CEO John Hanke, the chief executive behind the smash-hit smartphone game Pokémon Go, stopped by San Diego Comic-Con on Sunday to drop some big hints as to the future of the game.

Here’s what Hanke revealed, in a conversation with host and Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick, as reported byComicBook.com:

• Sorry about the servers: Hanke told the San Diego crowd that they “weren’t provisioned for what happened” and that they’re working on keeping the servers up and reliable before they add new features. Similarly, Hanke also says they’re working on fixing things like thebusted Pokémon radar system.
• Rare Pokémon are coming: “There are some rare ones that haven’t showed up yet that will be showing up.” That’s important, given that only 145 out of the total 151 Pokémon have been accounted for by players worldwide.
• Your team will be more important: Each Pokémon team — Team Instinct (Yellow), Team Valor (Red), and Team Mystic (Blue) — has one of the three Legendary Bird Pokémon associated with it, and that might play into which of those same birds players can catch. “They’re kinda aligned with the teams, and we might have something to announce about the teams soon,” says Hanke. Plus, the leaders of each time will start dispensing advice to players sooner rather than later, Hanke says.
• Turning Pokéstops into Pokémon Centres: Hanke hints you’ll be able to turn some Pokéstops in the game into Pokémon Centres, where you can heal your Pokémon, in accordance with the original video games that Pokémon Go is based on.
• Players haven’t found everything:Players of Pokémon Go have independently discovered that giving an Eevee the name of “Pyro,” “Rainer,” or “Sparky” will ensure that it evolves into Flareon, Vaporeon, or Jolteon, respectively. Hanke says there are plenty more little “easter eggs” like that which players haven’t found.

Hanke confirmed that Pokémon trading is coming to the game, which he had previously told Business Insider. Meanwhile, players are starting to hit the limits of what the game currently has to offer, as Brooklyn-based Nick Johnson hascaught all 142 Pokémon currently available in the United States.

Pokemon Go gets big Comic-Con stage, creator talks success and future

The creator of the wildly popular Pokemon Go gaming app received the celebrity treatment on Sunday at the final day of San Diego's annual Comic-Con, as he discussed the viral popularity and future of the game.

John Hanke, founder of Niantic Labs and developer of Pokemon Go, was welcomed with loud applause from more than 6,500 fans on a stage usually reserved for star-studded presentations from movie studios and TV networks.

Hanke said the global popularity of the game, which incorporates colorful animated creatures from Nintendo's Pokemon universe into the real world using augmented reality (AR) and Google mapping technology, had been "mind-blowing."

The game, released July 6, was evolved from an earlier Niantic Labs AR app game called Ingress, which Hanke said has also gained in popularity after the release of Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Go has captivated fans around the world, with 21 million active U.S. users in under two weeks of its launch. Stock prices for Nintendo soared after the game's launch.

Hanke said updates and new features would be rolled out in the coming months and years as the game grows to include more creatures and elements of the vast Pokemon universe.

During a question-and-answer session with the audience, Hanke said the team was aware and fixing the glitches and bugs in the game and took fans' suggestions on what to add, such as possible functions to breed Pokemon.

He said they were working on enhancing the functions of "pokestops" and "gyms," located at various landmarks within a user's neighborhood, and unveiled the identities of the three virtual leaders of the teams - Blanche for Team Mystic, Spark for Team Instinct and Candela for Team Valor.

The developer said AR "can enhance the things we already do to get out of the house," and wanted Pokemon Go to encourage people to go outdoors, be active and meet new people.

Many players at the panel had hopes that a rare Pokemon may have been released just for them, but Hanke disappointed them, saying no new rare creatures were at the convention.

The small team at Niantic Labs, founded internally at Google and spun into an independent entity last year, has struggled to keep the game's servers running as more users join, Hanke said, and their current priority was to prevent servers from crashing.