Pokémon GO GDC Presentation Cancelled, Niantic Announces Beta Testing

When Pokémon GO was announced last September, the world went nuts for it. Finally, we were getting Pokémon in real life — that dream shared by anyone who’s ever picked up a Pokémon game. Since then, however, there have been no updates, no new footage or even screenshots and the hype is dying down a little. While Niantic’s GDC presentation, “Catch ‘Em All: ‘Pokemon GO’ and Real World Gaming” promised to make up for that, it has now been cancelled in favour of using the time for further development.

The presentation that promised to give attendees “a first-hand, in-depth look at how players are interacting and exploring the world with one another through Pokemon GO” has now been marked as cancelled in the GDC schedule, leading many to wonder whether the game might not be ready to be demoed yet. The cancellation of the talk doesn’t seem to hint at a cancellation of the game itself, however.

Just yesterday Niantic announced via their blog that field testing of the game was set to begin in Japan, with users invited to apply to be testers from the end of this month. For anyone outside of Japan there’s only a quick note saying “stay tuned for information about expansion of the field test to other markets.”

The CEO of Niantic has released a statement clarifying why they made the decision to cancel the GDC session:

“We have decided to forego our GDC talk on Pokémon GO in order to focus on getting the product ready for beta test and launch. As much as we hate to disappoint those in the industry attending GDC, we feel our time and energy right now are best spent on making sure every aspect of the product is where we want it to be.”

Until we do get some more information and game footage, well I guess we’ll just have to make do with the single trailer that’s been released to date:


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