Over the past few months, developer Niantic has been introducing a boatload of Gen 3 Pokemon to Pokemon GO. It began by introducing Ghost-type Gen 3 characters and most recently Water and Ice-type Gen 3 Pokemon were added to the game. But Niantic isn't done with the new additions yet, and has made another major Gen 3-related announcement.

Niantic has confirmed that Pokemon GO will be introducing 23 new Gen 3 Pokemon later today. Characters first discovered in the Hoenn region and featured in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire will be added to the game for the "very first time," explains an announcement. The update follows the arrival of other Gen 3 characters such as (Ruby and Sapphire starter Pokemon) Torchic, Treecko, and Mudkip.

Unfortunately, Niantic has not revealed all of the Gen 3 characters that are included in this Pokemon GO update. However, a promotional image for the update does offer a few names. Some of the characters featured in the image are:

  • Flygon (Ground and Dragon-type)
  • Trapinch (Ground-type)
  • Solrock (Rock and Psychic-type)
  • Aggron (Steel and Rock-type)
  • Cacnea (Grass-type)
  • Aron (Steel and Rock-type)
  • Camerupt (Fire and Ground-type)
  • Lunatone (Rock and Psychic-type)
  • Whismur (Normal-type)
pokemon go new gen 3 loudred vibrava

Assuming that the Pokemon GO update will also include all of the evolutions for these Pokemon (including Cacturne, Vibrava, Lairon, Numel, Loudred, and Exploud), this still only makes 15 Pokemon. It means that Pokemon GO players will just have to look around their neighborhoods to figure out the other eight characters that have been introduced with this latest Gen 3 wave.

With this update, it means that there are now over 100 Gen 3 Pokemon for Pokemon GO players to catch. Combined with the dynamic weather update that also arrived late last year, it means that players have a lot to get to grips with. It should also mean that players are able to stay entertained while Niantic works on releasing other significant gameplay changes and overhauls.

For example, Niantic is working on bringing new social features to the game, having purchased a social app developer especially for it. There are also the hotly anticipated trading and PvP features that the developer has been teasing for over a year now. With no release dates attached to these developments, fans could still have a long wait until they arrive, but collecting all of those Gen 3 Pokemon should be more than enough to keep everyone busy in the meantime.

Pokemon GO is available for Android and iOS devices.