A streamer known as Pocket Jon has recently done an AMAA (ask me almost anything) with Niantic employee “Wes”, which potentially teased a host of game changing updates! Pocket Jon has now made the stream video private, but we watched it before it was hidden and these are the highlights.
Wes is stated to be the Events Logistics Manager at Niantic, and Pocket Jon shares that Wes is often at in-person events and that he does a lot for the community in sharing feedback to Niantic.
We want to highlight that we don’t think that this source is particularly trustworthy, but decided to share this story since it was fairly believable during the stream. We also never heard about Pocket Jon prior to this.
Wes specifically states that remote-able Dynamax and Gigantamax Battles are ‘on the way’ in a rather shock reveal! He doesn’t state how long this may take, but explains that the aim with remoting is to be able to help those rural players in the middle of nowhere, and that trainers who enjoy remote raiding far outweigh those who don’t agree with it.
It is interesting to note that this will have a major impact on Five-Star Legendary Dynamax and Gigantamax Battles, both of which require a lot of communication and planning in order to be successful. It puts the onus on individuals to have prepped their teams, and to pay attention to their fellow battlers to ensure success. Remoting Max Battles will really change the game, and may actually make these battles harder for some, but easier for others. It will certainly be an amazing update for those rural trainers who have no chance of getting big groups together for Gigantamax Battles!
A discussion about the how and why of when level 60 could be released takes place, with Wes discussing how the level cap from level 40 to 50 came to fruition. Once it became clear that a high amount of trainers were at level 40, were active in game, and needed a further challenge, level 50 became a target. For level 60 to be released, it seems that more active trainers need to get to level 50 and need that next challenge. At present it seems not a high enough percentage of active players are at level 50, so level 60 doesn’t make sense to Niantic just yet.
This is a good point. With the different journey to level 50, many trainers may have more than enough XP to hit level 50, but don’t have the same drive and ambition when it comes to the set tasks to complete each level. In particular, many trainers haven’t done the PvP tasks at level 44.
Wes confirms a popular Community Day theory, saying ‘if you look at the First Community day of the year the region that that Pokemon is from often depicts what the entire year will be’. Trainers have long suspected that specific regions are the focus for years or seasons, and it explains some of the more ‘interesting’ and unexpected choices that have been made. With the February Community Day announced as Karrablast and Shelmet, it seems that we can expect a focus on the Unova region for the non-starter Pokémon Community Days in 2025.
We’ve had a few Unova Pokémon in Community Day already, including Roggenrola and Timburr, but there are plenty of options still available. Could we see Tympole, Venipede, Sandile, Gothita, Solosis, Vanillite and Klink? There are a lot of Pokémon families with two evolutions that could feature, and with the duo Community Day for February, there are other Pokémon that could have a similar arrangement, like Archen and Tirtouga for example.
Or, could this be hinting that we will see more Paldean Pokémon featured? Sprigatito kicked off the year, and with Unova Tour happening soon, would it make sense to focus on Unova so heavily?
Global Trading is something Pokémon GO fans have long cried out for, because it is a feature of the main series, and now is even available in TCG Pocket. Wes says that he is a big supporter of the idea of global trading, and that it is something he has pushed for. He believes that it is ultimately something that should be added to the game eventually because it is in all other Pokémon games, but from his replies, it doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon.
Costume Pokémon! A very marmite aspect of Pokémon GO, trainers love them or hate. Wes is asked who designs them and comes up with the concepts for them, and while he doesn’t know that, he shares that every costume Pokémon has had a plushie variant available via the Pokémon Centre at some point in time. This has been noted previously for Halloween and the Holiday Costume Pokémon in particular, but knowing that all Costume Pokémon have a plushie/merchandise variant is very interesting, and makes potential Costume Pokémon easier to predict!
In a fun moment, Cowboy Hat Caterpie is mentioned. Social media users will knows ‘Cowboy Hat Caterpie Guy’ Mike Nerdlaw, who is famously seen under every post Niantic makes asking ‘Cowboy Hat Caterpie Please’. As a Community, Pokémon GO trainers have really gotten behind the idea of Cowboy Hat Caterpie as a potential Costume Pokémon in game, but sadly it seems that the lack of official merch of Cowboy Hat Caterpie is putting a dampener on our calls. So do we need to start tagging in all the official Pokémon social media accounts instead of just Niantic? Caterpie needs their cowboy hat!
Wes is asked about the possibility to earn more than 50 PokéCoins per day, and shares that isn’t something he is involved in with the department he works in. However he points out that there have been occasions to earn more than 50 PokéCoins per day, including during the testing that Niantic did previously that gave more different ways of earning coins. He says that “there were a lot of complaints [and] there were a lot of the wrong people being listen to and it ended up not becoming a thing”. He implies that the current Lunar New Year event is being used as a test with the bonus PokéCoins field research tasks, to see how popular they are and how often they are thrown away. Wes talks about how there were a lot of complaints on social media about the previous PokéCoins tests which he found quite baffling, and hopes that this new test is better received.
2025 looks set to be a year that continues with quality of life updates teased at, some popular conspiracy theories confirmed, and the idea of remote Max Battling is certainly an intriguing one!
