As it was reported earlier this week, Niantic has continued to roll out their Generation IV batch of Pocket Monsters into their massively popular mobile game,
Pokémon Go. With their latest release of Pokémon, however, it seems they made some final changes before allowing a certain bug and flying type to be available to the general public.
So who's the buggy Pokémon joining the ranks? If you guessed Combee, you're absolutely correct! Although the adorable hexagonal honeycomb triplets are available for capture in the game now, you'll notice that you can only encounter females.
Fans of the mainline
Pokémon series will no doubt know that the female version of Combee evolves into Vespiquen and the male, well, he doesn't really do much of anything. However, in the games the male to female ratio when capturing Combee has always been 7 to 1, with the males being the more popular and frequent drones, much like in real life.
So why were the males removed from
Pokémon Go after having already been placed in the coding? There could be a couple of reasons. It's possible that Niantic decided to remove the males so it would be easier for people to get Vespiquen at her launch, with plans to introduce the males down the line making her more rare. Another potential reason is that having a male Combee with nothing to evolve to might have been too buggy for the system, but there are other Pokémon such as Kirlia with gender-specific evolutions and both of their genders have been left in.
The most exciting potential would be that Niantic is delaying the release of male Combees and waiting for - say - a male evolution introduced in Generation VIII? While it may not be the most likely scenario, fans of the series have wondered why there wasn't a male form for years, and this may finally be their answer.
The most likely case is that the males were just too difficult, but if they do happen to be re-introduced to Pokémon Go at the same ratio as they are in the mainline series, it will be a lot harder for players to evolve a Vespiquen in the future.
Get ready for an all-new Pokémon experience Pokémon Go opens a universe of Pokemon to find, catch, trade, and battle on your iPhone or Android device. With Pokémon Go, you'll discover Pokémon in a whole new world - your own!
Pokémon GO is currently available for Android and iOS devices.