If you’re like me you’ve been avidly playing Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, and have been getting absolutely obliterated by Mewtwos and Dragonites. As frustrating as that is one of the apps biggest features is coming, but not swiftly.
Pokemon has revealed that they will be releasing the “trade” feature in January 2025, allowing Pokemon Trainers to trade Pokemon with users and friends from around the world, but instead of allowing all cards to be traded, the Pokemon Team will be limiting what cards to be traded.
Pokemon quoted: “To begin with, we plan to add new booster packs by the end of the year. In addition, we are aiming to add a feature that allows certain cards to be traded starting in January, 2025. We are planning to gradually expand the selection of cards that are able to be traded”.
I am personally excited about the announcement and the release, however i am a little bit sceitpical in regards to how Pokemon is going to handle this. There’s no denying that the game itself sub-consciously pushes you towards paying for cards, and I worry that they will do the same with trading, in a way that makes you want to spend more.
This could be as simple as forcing the user to spend Tokens to trade, or limiting it to “non promo” cards which entices you even more to attempt at snagging limited edition cards for example. Because, what we all want is the ability to trade what we want when we want.
I understand that rolling it out slowly may help them manage the influx of users opening packs for profit to resell them on a secondary market but I worry that it will cost us users to trade what we want, when want. But only time will tell, for now this is a great announcement, and I hope the new addition of extra sets brings new artwork to the scene. Who knows, perhaps we’ll be able to trade cards from different sets too!
