Pokemon GO May Now Have Shiny Pokemon Variants
By Cody Gravelle 22 November 2016
A new datamining effort from the team at The Silph Road indicates that Pokemon GO may be implementing rare “shiny” variants of Pokemon in-game very soon.
Pokemon GO might have made a name for itself on the back of its incredible commercial success, but the game’s initial post-launch period was bogged down by technical issues, overly simplistic gameplay features, and key elements of the Pokemon GO experience ending up broken for weeks. Despite those initial troubles, however, Pokemon GO has evolved into a game that has retained a significant portion of its initially huge playerbase while releasing updates that address most player concerns at any given time.
It has been a steep learning curve for Niantic, but meeting the demands of Pokemon GO players is now something the developer is achieving with the kind of regularity that gamers have come to expect from gaming giants like Blizzard and Valve. Pokemon GO certainly has a long way to go, but subtle changes like the ones made to how Eevees hatch in Pokemon GO show a developer that is listening to the concerns of both its casual and hardcore fans. Now, datamining from The Silph Road has suggested that Niantic might be implementing another fan favorite feature in the near future – the rare “shiny” Pokemon variant could be on its way to Pokemon GO very soon.
The datamine, which was done on Pokemon GO‘s APK 0.47.1 update, uncovered the existence of new audio files that play whenever a wild Pokemon that is deemed rare by the game is captured. That, coupled with the fact that a sizable amount of new code now segregates Pokemon materials into “default” and “shiny”, suggests that there is a possibility one of Pokemon GO‘s hidden secrets could be the existence of “shiny” variants of Pokemon.
Of course, just because some of the data files indicate that “shiny” Pokemon could exist doesn’t mean they’ll ever actually make it into the game. The datamine didn’t uncover any new Pokemon sprites that indicate Pokemon GO already has models ready for potentially “shiny” Pokemon, and it’s possible the existence of new “shiny” materials might just be a coding update for a smaller, unrelated feature instead.
Currently, there seem to be an abnormal number of rumors swirling around Niantic’s mobile killer app, including the possibility that Pokemon GO may have finally added Ditto to the game. Whether or not any of these rumors end up being true, however, might not matter – Pokemon GO is still going strong with or without Ditto and “shiny” Pokemon, and as long as Niantic does just enough to keep trainers interested, that trend won’t stop any time soon.
Pokemon GO is available now for iOS and Android mobile devices.
Source: The Silph Road (via VG 24/7)
