Pokemon GO fans woke up to a very exciting announcement today. Niantic is finally ready to add Friends and Trading to the mobile AR game and the community can't wait to learn everything about the new systems. From the sound of things, Pokemon GO players will be spending the next few months working hard to reach Best Friend status with their real life buddies.

The announcement from Pokemon GO revealed a lot of details about the new system and explained how players can increase their friend levels. In addition to that intel, IGN also received some additional details from Niantic's software engineer Kirsten Koa during an E3 Q&A.

One of the crucial pieces of intel to come out of that chat relates to how long it takes to reach the top tier of friendship in the game. Best Friends get an insane Stardust discount when it comes to trading, so this is going to be very important to a lot of players.

According to Koa, here is the breakdown of how long it would take to reach each level of friendship if the players worked at it every single day...

Good friend: 1 day

Great friend: 7 days

Ultra friend: 30 days

Best friend: 90 days

90 days is a ton of time, so clearly Niantic wants Best Friend bonuses to be something very special. Trainers will really have to work to receive that tier and unlock the steep Stardust discount for Legendary trades.

The update is scheduled to arrive later this week, so keep an eye out for it in the app store. Until then, good luck out there, trainers!

Pokemon GO is available now in select regions on Android and iOS devices.

Source: IGN