Did Niantic forget to release Shiny Pokemon?

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Lately, we’ve been getting A LOT of reader e-mails asking the essentially same thing:

“What happened with Shiny Pokemon in Pokemon GO? I though more Shiny Pokemon will be out by the time Water Festival ended?”

One has to understand the following: our readers are a well educated, millennial aged jolly bunch and we take their questions seriously. Especially when 65% of their questions are about Shiny Pokemon.

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why this lead us to brainstorm on why and how Niantic “failed” to release Shiny Pokemon in the moment when everyone wanted them.

What happened with Shiny Pokemon?

Apparently, nothing! Niantic released Shiny Magikarp and Gyarados during the Water Festival (both are still available) and went completely AWOL on the rest.

In a similar fashion like Generation II was introduced through the initial release of Baby Pokemon, Niantic chose to tease the player base with only releasing two Shiny variants.

Unfortunately, as the volume of Shiny Magikarp caught was heavily influenced by the water event spawn rates, it is impossible to even guess the spawn rate of Shiny Magikarp variants!

It’s funny how divided the research community is on the matter:

  • optimistic estimates say 1 in 256,
  • realistic estimates say 1 in 400
  • and some even say 1 in 8192

With that, it’s only clear that one thing has happened: Niantic has a different plan in mind. We, as a community, are often quick to judge and say “Niantic failed again!” or even “Dead game!”, but the truth maybe elsewhere.

Is it possible that Niantic is planing to use Shiny Pokemon as a backup plan for the Gym rework? It seems reasonable to assume that if the gym rework doesn’t land in the next two months, players will at least need something to collect.

Or maybe they’re holding it off for trading purposes? After all, economies are built around rarity, just think about rarity of gold in real life.

If anything is known, it’s known that Shiny Pokemon in Pokemon GO are going to be super rare. We could have been given a taste of the Shine, but the full release could be tied to Trading.

What do you think? Share your predictions in the comment section below.

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Zeroghan
Zeroghanhttps://pokemongohub.net/
Zeroghan started the Hub in July 2016 and hasn't had much sleep since. A lover of all things Pokémon, web development, and writing.

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