Pokemon Go players living in rural areas might've have gotten their hopes up that the upcoming inclusion of Pokemon trading would enable them to trade their monsters with players worldwide, but that does not seem to be the case.
This news comes from Nintendo senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura, who spoke at this year's Game Developer Conference in San Fransisco (transcription by Polygon).
Trading won’t be through the internet. You shouldn’t be able to exchange your Pokémon with someone who is 100 miles away from you. The person needs to be in your proximity.
While certainly inconvenient for players living in the more remote places of the world, this stance is in line with Nintendo and Niantic's goal of bringing players together in the real world and not just in a virtual space. Trading has to conform to this design standard as well.
I wasn’t really thinking of trading as a way to solve the local area spawn issue. That was more, we have a couple Pokémon that only spawn in a couple regions, and that was the hope, that some Pokémon you have to know someone or find someone who lives in certain regions and meet and exchange.We don’t want to just have that be an online game that you can just exchange virtually.
Trading will most likely be introduced to Pokemon Go as winter turns into spring and going outside once again turns into a pleasant experience instead of an uncomfortable necessity.
Even though rural players still won't have a wealth of options available to them when the temperatures rise, Nintendo has still been working on some features players living outside of the cities can use to play the game. When this feature is ready to be released, you'll be able to find local hiking trails that contain more Pokemon.
Most recently, Niantic added second generation Pokemon to the game. More on that can be found here.
What do you think of the trading feature? Are you planning on picking up Pokemon Go again in the coming months?
