Pokémon Go stole the hearts of players around the world last month, but its popularity in the weeks since has seemingly waned considerably. Seriously, nobody is setting up lures in my neighborhood anymore.
The Pokemon Company
Part of that is that it's the nature of any zeitgeist to die down over time, or at least after the initial surge of interest, but it also probably has something to do with the fact that the game has serious problems. Thankfully, developer Niantic released a big update this week to address some of those concerns.
Here is what you can expect from the new update:
- A text box that appears to remind users not to play while traveling above a certain speed, which has come up several times for me while casually walking since the update came out.
- Trainers can now change their nickname one time.
- They fixed whatever was wrong with the battery saver feature on iOS and re-enabled it.
- Most importantly, certain users are now part of a test environment for a hugely enhanced "Nearby" feature.
Those are the major new additions in the update, which also addresses the accuracy of curveball throws and fixes some bugs here and there.
It's probably far too late for Pokémon Go to recapture the magic of its first two weeks of existence, but it's at least a little encouraging to see Niantic finally addressing major concerns with the game. Hopefully the game finally becomes stabilized soon, so they can start giving us those sweet, sweet legendaries.