Pokemon Go Will Be Part of Pokemon's Big Legendary Year

Pokemon Go will have a place during the Pokemon franchise's planned year of Legendary events.

Earlier today, the Pokemon Company declared 2018 to be the year of the Legendary Pokemon. While the biggest part of the announcement was plans for monthly giveaways for Legendary Pokemon, the press release also included an intriguing tidbit about Pokemon Go.

"Pokemon Go players can also expect to see special promotions featuring Legendary Pokemon in 2018 as part of this legendary year celebration, with details being released soon," the press release noted.

There's a few possibilities as to how Pokemon Go will tie into the yearlong Legendary Pokemon celebration. The first, and most obvious, possibility is that Pokemon Go will keep releasing Legendary Pokemon at a rate of about one a month. There's still six more Legendary Pokemon from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire that need to be released in the game, which would cover Pokemon Go's Legendary Pokemon obligations until the fall...which is right around when "Gen 4" would likely to come out.

Another possibility is the return of Legendary Pokemon that were already added to the game. Counting Kyogre, we've seen eleven different Legendary Pokemon in the game, and none have made a widespread return appearance after they were cycled out as Raid Bosses. We could see Pokemon Go bring back those Pokemon as part of future Community Day events, or even bring in Shiny Legendary Pokemon to the game. After all, Pokemon Go has had Shiny versions of Legendary Pokemon on their servers for months, but they've yet to use a single one in the game.

The other possibility is tied to some of the new moves Pokemon Go added a few months ago. Groudon and Kyogre's signature moves were both among the handful of new moves programmed into Pokemon Go prior to the "Gen 3" launch, but we've yet to see them appear in the game. Our current guess is that Pokemon Go will make Precipice Blades Groudon or Origin Pulse Kyogre future Community Day events that somehow tie into the larger Legendary event.

Of course, this is all speculation. We won't know what Pokemon Go has in store for us until they make some official announcements (or tinker with their code a bit more) later this year. But, players should get ready for a "Legendary" year in the game!