Pokemon Go added new Pokemon in a recent update, which includes Pichu, Togepi and a few other Pokemons from Silver and Gold. In keeping up with the holiday spirit, Niantic also added a limited edition holiday Pikachu that wears a Santa hat.
The festive Pikachu can be found everywhere in the wild, and Niantic encourages players to use the hashtag #HolidayPikachu to celebrate the season. For those who have hoarded enough Pikachu candy, they can evolve the Santa-hat Pikachu to Raichu. And yes, the Raichu keeps the Santa hat.
To evolve holiday Pikachu to Raichu, one usually needs 50 Pikachu candies. Since there's a lot more festive Pikachus popping up in the wild, players can take advantage of it to catch more Pikachus as one caught Pikachu can give three candies. If the Pikachu is sent to the professor, there's also one candy in exchange. Or Pikachu can be assigned as a buddy while players are hatching eggs to get one candy per kilometer.
The holiday Pikachu is only available until December 29 at 10:00AM PST, so there's still plenty of time to catch a Santa hat critter. The new expansion and release of a holiday-themed Pokemon caps off another busy week of promotions from Niantic, after announcing partnerships with Sprint and Starbucks to transform their branches into Pokestops and Pokegyms.
It's a smart move from Niantic for the winter holidays to encourage users to keep playing Pokemon Go, as most people will be more preoccupied staying warm indoors against the chilly weather instead of hatching eggs and evolving their Pokemon. Not to mention the upcoming release of another expected massive hit, Super Mario Run, that can give Pokemon Go some serious competition.
See more about the new Pokemon here: