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[UPDATED] Rare Pikachu to be released on Pokémon GO at SIGGRAPH 2017

A rare Pikachu will be released on Pokémon GO! Rumour has it they’ve now sacrificed a Farfetch’d event because of this Leek.

Update: Speculation has increased that a ‘Ash-Hat Pikachu’ would be the rare Pikachu in question, following this tweet about a short video from the Pokémon movie account. We’ll have to wait to see if this isn’t just a bit of unrelated collaboration to advertise both products however.

Original article: A promotional email for the computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2017 has revealed that Niantic will be releasing a rare Pikachu on Pokémon GO.

Representatives from Niantic, Inc will be panelists at the event to be held in Los Angeles in late July.

Under a list of new experiences to be had at the conference it is mentioned that Niantic, Inc will “release a rare Pikachu”. It is unclear what exactly is meant by a rare Pikachu – whether it will be a different model, a shiny, or a Pikachu with a different hat as has been distributed in previous seasonal events. It is also unclear whether this Pikachu will be exclusively distributed at SIGGRAPH, or whether it will be released at SIGGRAPH before being released globally.

Promotional email for SIGGRAPH 2017. Source

There is speculation that it will be a Shiny Pikachu that is distributed, with some citing the recently updated Pikachu model as an indicator for this. However at this stage, this is only one of many possibilities, none of which are confirmed.

We’ll bring more as it comes!