Recently, the 21st Annual Webby Awards took place and Niantic, the developer behind Pokémon GO, won five awards for the game, most notably the Webby and People’s Voice Award for Best Mobile Game. Archit Bhargava, Niantic’s Global Product Marketing Lead, accepted the awards and gave his acceptance speech. Winners of Webby Awards traditionally give five-word acceptance speeches and Bhargava followed suit. His acceptance speech was, “This summer will be legendary.”
When you are limited to just five words, every word has to be deliberate, so many are thinking that it isn’t just a coincidence that Bhargava used the word “legendary” to describe Niantic’s plans for Pokémon GO this summer.
Pokémon GO currently includes nearly all Pokémon from the first and second generations. There are only twelve Pokémon not available in the game, which are Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo, Mew, Smeargle, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Lugia, Ho-Oh and Celebi. It is likely that Smeargle isn’t in the game yet because Niantic are trying to figure out how to implement its Sketch move, like how Ditto wasn’t available for a long time while Niantic figured how to implement its Transform. The rest of the unavailable Pokémon are all Legendary Pokémon. Earlier this year, John Hanke, the CEO and founder of Niantic, told WIRED that players will be seeing more of Legendary Pokémon this year. Between this and Bhargava’s specific word choice at the Webby Awards, it seems pretty likely that we’ll finally be getting Legendary Pokémon in Pokémon GO soon.
In the meantime, Pokémon GO is currently having an event called Adventure Week until May 25, so go take advantage of that while you still can.