It’s been over a year since Pokémon Go launched, and all of us remember quite well the insanity of the craze. The internet was covered with snapped photos of Pokémon in Augmented Reality, hordes of trainers of all ages roamed parks, streets, and basically any place they could get to, and every shop for miles touted poke lures and poke stops.

This was before the reality of the broken promises settled in. Most of us also remember that the original screens and advertising for the game seemed to promise exciting battles and trading – but we also remember that the real game had none of that. Now, the CEO of Pokémon, Tsunekazu Ishihara, is promising all those things are still coming.

The inherent problem with Pokémon Go is that it is essentially a walking sim wearing a Pokémon mask. None of these are new revelations to fans of the game, but it comes home again in light of promises to come and as a reminder of what it could have been (or could still be).

Most of the issues players ran into – having to catch and encounter the same 5-10 Pokémon for instance – would have been solved by implementing a trading system, which also would have helped establish, grow, and nurture the community. Similarly, if players could battle one another and raise their Pokémon’s strength, in the way the actual game worked, then that would encourage more interaction, purchasing of in-game items, and engagement, but for now, the game has done nothing to improve the biggest gripes with the game.

In fact, as with many games, the developers for Pokémon Go are far more interested in technical issues than ones fans are interested in. Ishihara pointed out a desire to make Augmented Reality even more interactive and teased at the idea of a Pikachu being able to ‘sense’ a table and leap onto it while players tried to catch him. As cool as this is, we’d still prefer a trading system and something to do in the game other than walk.

However, Pokémon Go is still wildly successful. If gamers have turned their backs on it, children and non-gamers have not. It still gets several million users logging in daily, and it’s unlikely with the profits it has generated that it will be too concerned with the opinions of enthusiasts.

We will have to wait and see at what distant future Ishihara actually implements something like a game to Pokémon Go, but we will have to see if the fans will still be waiting (of course they will. It’s Pokémon).