Niantic has revealed Pokemon Go will be getting in-game chat features to help players communicate with one another out on the field and discover new communities.
Despite being a fairly social experience, Pokemon Go does not have an in-game chat feature at present.
While some like this more hands-off approach to chatting, there are certainly cases where players would like to communicate with faraway friends they’ve made.
Thankfully, Niantic has announced that new chat features will be coming to Pokemon Go in the next few months after being in beta for some time.
Niantic adding chat features to Pokemon Go
The chat details came by way of the Pokemon Go blog, which also went over some upcoming changes to Event Boxes and local raid battles.
Niantic explained that some of these new social features will be based inside of a separate Niantic app. Apparently, this app has been in a beta testing phase for some time now and was being tested by Ingress players.
According to Niantic, this standalone app “is designed to make it much easier to communicate with other Agents, discover Agent communities, and coordinate real-world Missions – all in one place.”
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Though the language used is centered around Ingress, it seems as though these features will function similarly in Pokemon Go.
Niantic acknowledged that users have had to use outside communication channels like Discord and Reddit to communicate up until now, but the company hopes to alleviate this soon.
The blog post confirms that key features of this new chat app include:
- Local Communities: Easily find other players by creating local communities around you.
- Niantic Friends: Easily add and manage your friends and fellow Agents in Ingress, and across all Niantic titles.
- Direct & Group Messaging: Organize all your chats with friends in one place and coordinate Field Ops.
- Real-World Events: Quickly create and share local events, farms, or meetups with reminders, and invite your community to join and play.
These features would definitely help players coordinate events like Raid Battles, as well as easily organize meetups with friend groups to complete big objectives much easier.
While players may have to wait a couple more months before these new features – and Niantic’s companion app – are fully available to the public, they will hopefully help strengthen the Pokemon Go community even more.
