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Pokémon Go finally gets a new feature after a seven-year-old tech demo

A new AR feature in Pokémon Go shows that our favorite monsters aren’t just good for battling, and can be this year’s next top models.

pokemon go playgrounds - two phones showing pokemon in an AR setting

Eight years on, and we’re still getting Pokémon Go updates to keep us coming back and lobbing more balls around in the real world. Pokémon Go has a new feature available for certain areas – Pokémon Playgrounds – which lets you take custom photos of your favorite party members.

You may remember that there was a tech demo for this very thing in the past, but now users in Seattle and Bellevue have access to the Playground feature. If you’re in these areas, you can click a button in the bottom right of the screen when you hit up a Pokéstop or a gym.

You can pop your ‘mon of choice down and take some snazzy pics of them with the AR camera, including other trainers’ Pokémon who have done the same. Your buddy stays there for 48 hours. Imagine it: a Drifloon hanging around a theme park stop, a Beedrill in a park, or a Snorunt at this lovely snowman-themed stop. Perhaps you could even use one of the new Gigantamax Pokémon for a photoshoot.

While this is a neat little extra, it likely doesn’t offer too much in terms of gameplay – however, PoGoCentral mentions that this could “lead to Pokémon Centres, Day Cares, or Trading Stations” in the mobile game. Now that is something I’m very interested in.

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Personally, my use of Pokémon Go waned some time in 2019, but more things to do in the app would bring me back, especially cute options that don’t involve me leaving my Charizard in a gym for three years.

As this feature appears for some players already, it’s likely that it’ll roll out to a wider audience soon. While you wait for it, you can get the new Pokémon Go codes here and see this month’s Pokémon Go raid schedule here.