'Pokémon GO' news: Niantic extends availability of legendary bird Ho-Oh

"Pokémon GO" players will be able to catch Ho-Oh for an extended time.Twitter/PokemonGoApp

"Pokémon GO" fans who have yet to catch Ho-Oh are getting some good news. Game developer Niantic has officially extended the number of days that the legendary bird will appear in the augmented reality (AR) game.

The official Twitter account of "Pokémon GO" has confirmed that Ho-Oh will continue to appear in Legendary Raids for an additional 48 hours. This means that players have up to Dec. 14 to go out and look for a raid battle against the powerful Pokémon.

The extension of the limited-time event is due to the game encountering a bug that prevented many players from catching the rainbow Pokémon over the weekend.

The glitch involved players battling Ho-Oh during Legendary Raids. Whenever a player dropped out of a raid for any reason, all the other players participating in the Raid were prevented from getting a chance to catch the legendary bird. This is because they were not able to access the post-raid screen where they have the opportunity to catch the Pokémon.

Although Niantic was able to identify the problem and apply a fix by Sunday, the issue still took away some valuable time for players to catch the rare and powerful Pokémon.

Initially, Ho-Oh was only supposed to be available until Dec. 12, but after receiving numerous reports and complaints about the raid problems, Niantic decided to extend the event.

The news of the extension was first reported by players who contacted Niantic about the problem. In their response, the company apologized for the experience and promised that the event would be extended. The exact period of the extension was not confirmed until the announcement on social media.

Ho-Oh is a legendary Fire and Flying-type Pokémon that was introduced in Generation 2 of the "Pokémon" handheld games. The Pokémon is the counterpart of Lugia, which was the first legendary creature that "Pokémon GO" introduced.