Pokemon Go fans better be bracing for a big announcement and a world of confusion, as Niantic and The Pokemon Company officially announced that Gigantimax Pokemon are en route later this month.
“The Pokémon Company International, in collaboration with Niantic, announced the upcoming launch of Gigantamax in Pokémon GO, which will debut on October 26, 2024,” the studio says. “This new mechanic expands upon the Dynamax feature introduced on September 10, 2024, allowing select Pokémon to grow and change their appearance during battles. Players will encounter Gigantamax Pokémon during limited-time events, starting with Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise. These Pokémon will be more difficult to battle than other Dynamax Pokémon, requiring teamwork with other Trainers.”
Of course, beyond the press release, the plot thickens. For starters, local-only raids are already deeply unpopular, and these Gigantimax raids of the Max Raid Battle variety are made for 40Â people. The problem is, Niantic isn’t talking about the limitations. And following the suspiciously vague update last week, player dataminers have found that Niantic has essentially reverted and corrected many of the late August raid changes.
So as mentioned in our constantly updating October event round up, we now have more details on the October 26th-27th event introducing the new Gigantimax feature. There is some good stuff, such as each Gigantimax ‘mon getting a unique attack while in its form. But the new event is just the Gigianti forms for the Kanto starters that players already raided, making some gamers argue that it was just a bait-and-switch to get them to invest in ‘mon that were doomed to be rapidly replaced. Again, Max Soup may be a thing in the future to “correct” old pokemon, so don’t trash any good ones, but the move does feel scummy.
10/16 Update:Â Via Eurogamer, we’ve learned that Niantic is estimating that the “true” number of players needed to complete these is closer to 10, and that we were right about it feeling like Niantic missed something: these are “beyond” Tier 5 raids. Tier 5 apparently will be reserved for “Legendary Dynamax creatures,” which may mean your Zacian and Zamazenta from normal raids may not be getting their Crowned versions. Eurogamer also reports that the battles will “refresh multiple times a day,” meaning it’s losing one of the few strengths it had compared to normal raids: having a long enough availability to plan after-work activity.
As for the event itself, it seems to be simply an introduction to the mechanic: no bonuses, no special spawns. It should also be noted that Niantic is saying these are for up to 40Â players in groups of four or fewer people combined. Whether it’s still local-only or groups will be globally combined is anyone’s guess, but we’ve reached out to The Pokemon Company for clarity and will report back if we get any.
That being said, players have noted the difficulty of even 3-star raids that can be soloed with proper investment but are much easier as duo content. Skipping from solo/duo content to 40-player content seems like a huge leap, especially if the feature turns out to be in-person only. (For context, the current content is nearly purely for soloers and multi-accounters in my area – yes, activity against the TOS Niantic does not enforce). Even in LA County, I have to drive across a few cities to find a raiding hotspot that might have players interested in the current content who will group up.)
In other, pokemon news, Pokemon studio Game Freak admitted that it suffered a major data leak that exposed everything from employee data to source code and in-development game information (potential new Mega spoilers!).
10/25 Update: The event has started and it’s been confirmed that Niantic actually expects you to gather 30+ people to complete these in person. A major issue thus far is the lack of powered-up counters, which probably is a combination of Niantic treating the game like it’s 2019, using overly complex systems for a game that was supposed to be about exploring and exercising, and insulting players by asking them to raid pokemon that are direct upgrades to ‘mon that are roughly 45 days old. To make matters worse, while the pokemon is strong for Dynamax raids, it’s nothing special in regulars, PvP, lacks its Community Day move to make it debatably decent in those settings, and the item rewards are lacking to say the least.
