Pokemon Go’s Nearby Tracker & Partner Stores Announced

The holiday season is bringing a lot of interesting things to Pokemon Go. There's a new feature, as well as some new partners that are supposed to make catching Pokemon even more fun.

First up is the long-awaited Nearby Pokemon tracker. Following so many plans, leaks, and missteps, Niantic Labs has finally released the Nearby Pokemon feature to more locations for testing and use.

"To provide a better experience when searching for Pokemon in the real world, we have also made some changes to the way the Nearby Pokemon feature functions when there are only a few PokeStops in range."

I'm very happy about the Nearby tracker finally getting fixed. Tracking ‘mons has been the most difficult part of the game, particularly when compounded with the different tweaks for the speed lock for catching and gathering in the game.

What happens is that the tracker shows the PokeStop where the Pokemon is nearest to. At the very least, this will allow players to know which direction they would need to walk to follow the Pokemon they want.

Apart from the new Nearby feature, there are also two confirmed partnerships in the U.S. for the game. Sprint was the first partner in the U.S., which will yield a new experience for players for the 10,500 Sprint locations in the U.S. This will bring more PokeStops and Gyms in the area, particularly at RadioShack, as well as in-store charging stations in some Sprint locations.

The leak related to Starbucks has also been made official, as the developer announced the partnership with the coffee giant. The 7,800 company-operated Starbucks stores in the U.S will become PokeStops and Gyms, so players can enjoy the game in the comforts of their favorite Starbucks.

This is a good move for the holidays, and a good time for players to catch up on some of the action they may have missed during the season's rush. I for one will be playing on my downtime days—because I need to catch another ditto to give my first and only so far a good follow-up.

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