Speculation Future Pokemon Game Speculation Thread

[Juliyet]

With a new year comes the possibility of a new major release. Use this thread to discuss the next potential mainline Pokemon games of 2024 or beyond. Any games that are officially announced will receive their own thread, but feel free to use this one as a general speculation thread!

Any mention of leaks or rumors should be kept to our designated 2024 Pokemon Game Leaks/Rumors Thread.

Enjoy the ride!

 

[StormyStinger]

Does anyone think we might get a new Pokemon Rumble? We haven't had one since 2019.

 

[RileyXY1]

I have no clue what they're even gonna do.

 

[Lapidot Matoi]

I'm not sure. A lot the precedents set for most the sequels or remakes make me suspicious of what we'll see next. I think it will be something unexpected, or another legends game. Since there's no real precedent set for how release and timing for them yet.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I definitely think whatever this year's game is, it's going to take place in an old region. SV is done and they're probably not going to introduce a new region until Gen 10, so they're probably going to go back to an old region of some kind. As for which one, it's most likely between Johto and Unova, and I'm leaning towards Unova. LGPE was more about bringing Go gameplay to consoles than remaking Kanto, and I'm not sure they have interest in remaking Johto right now (there's an alternative way to bring Johto to Switch, which I'll get into in a minute). I think we'll get a BDSP-esque Unova remake + either a Legends Unova or some kind of spiritual successor to LA.

As far as what else besides the flagship game though, I'm wondering if it's finally time for main series games on NSO. This feels like something we need more and more with each passing day. The eShop has shut down, 3DS online is going down, and Bank is either going to be shut down completely or at least be unsafe to use. So there's a ton of old games that are going to be cut off. Bringing the Pokemon games to NSO can really help make these older regions remain accessible. This is how they can make both Johto and Unova accessible. In fact, if they put the first three gens on NSO, then the Switch will have every region in some form on the Switch except Kalos and Alola.

I'm also 50/50 on Mystery Dungeon happening next year. This would be about time for one and it's one of the more popular Pokemon spinoffs, but is it popular enough to get another game? I'm not so sure if it is, but maybe.

Also, there's a lot of rumors and speculation about the Switch's successor coming this year. I don't think Pokemon will make the jump Year 1, they tend to be a relatively late adopter and linger on the past gen console a bit. So if we do in fact get a Switch successor in 2024, don't be shocked if Pokemon largely ignores it until 2025/2026. This next game will most likely be a Switch game regardless of what Nintendo may or may not do with a potential next gen hardware release this year.

 

[RileyXY1]

I definitely think whatever this year's game is, it's going to take place in an old region. SV is done and they're probably not going to introduce a new region until Gen 10, so they're probably going to go back to an old region of some kind. As for which one, it's most likely between Johto and Unova, and I'm leaning towards Unova. LGPE was more about bringing Go gameplay to consoles than remaking Kanto, and I'm not sure they have interest in remaking Johto right now (there's an alternative way to bring Johto to Switch, which I'll get into in a minute). I think we'll get a BDSP-esque Unova remake + either a Legends Unova or some kind of spiritual successor to LA.

As far as what else besides the flagship game though, I'm wondering if it's finally time for main series games on NSO. This feels like something we need more and more with each passing day. The eShop has shut down, 3DS online is going down, and Bank is either going to be shut down completely or at least be unsafe to use. So there's a ton of old games that are going to be cut off. Bringing the Pokemon games to NSO can really help make these older regions remain accessible. This is how they can make both Johto and Unova accessible. In fact, if they put the first three gens on NSO, then the Switch will have every region in some form on the Switch except Kalos and Alola.

I'm also 50/50 on Mystery Dungeon happening next year. This would be about time for one and it's one of the more popular Pokemon spinoffs, but is it popular enough to get another game? I'm not so sure if it is, but maybe.

Also, there's a lot of rumors and speculation about the Switch's successor coming this year. I don't think Pokemon will make the jump Year 1, they tend to be a relatively late adopter and linger on the past gen console a bit. So if we do in fact get a Switch successor in 2024, don't be shocked if Pokemon largely ignores it until 2025/2026. This next game will most likely be a Switch game regardless of what Nintendo may oy may not do with a potential next gen hardware release this year.

Because of Home issues I don't think we're ever gonna get main series games on NSO. I think that we will instead get a collection of them as a separate release in 2026 for the franchise's 30th anniversary.

 

[Funnylion]

If we get a new Legends game this year, a concept I think would be cool for it would be the player character helping to set up the first Pokemon league. Since catching and battling are the two main parts of Pokemon, it would be fitting for the latter to have a game showing how it started to become more of a sport. The story could be based around the player going around whatever region we're in and finding strong trainers to recruit to become the first Gym Leaders, or something like that.

 

[Greninjaman]

If we get a new Legends game this year, a concept I think would be cool for it would be the player character helping to set up the first Pokemon league. Since catching and battling are the two main parts of Pokemon, it would be fitting for the latter to have a game showing how it started to become more of a sport. The story could be based around the player going around whatever region we're in and finding strong trainers to recruit to become the first Gym Leaders, or something like that.

I don't think it would HAVE to be a legends game in order to do a story about establishing the first league.

 

[zoroarctic]

A BDSP-style remake of BW would be disappointing. I would, however, be satisfied with even an ORAS-style remake - largely based on BW with some elements of BW2 thrown in.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I don't think it would HAVE to be a legends game in order to do a story about establishing the first league.

True, there's a lot of different ways they could do a prequel, it doesn't have to be Legends style. Hell, they might even decide they don't even want to do a prequel to succeed Legends Arceus, they could do another sequel instead (I'm not sure they'll do a straight up BW3 after all this time and I think it will be more like LA than BW2, but it would take place after BW2). Or maybe something completely different.

But whatever they decide I do think they'll have some kind of new, open world reimagining of an old region, we're not just going to get a BDSP or ORAS style remake and call it a day. You can just see with every game since SwSh (as well as the two DLC packs) that they keep wanting to make these big open world experiences teeming with Pokemon and continually introducing new Pokemon, cross gen evos, regional variants, and convergent evos. A typical remake isn't going to cut it for that because enacting those types of changes would make it feel like almost a completely different game, they need to stick to the script.

 

[RileyXY1]

One thing to note is that for some reason the Kalos box legends are the only ones that cannot be obtained in SV. The box legends of Johto, Hoenn, Unova, and Alola can all be obtained in SV itself while the Sinnoh and Galar box legends have to be transferred up from a Gen 8 game, but do exist in the code. This is not the case for Kalos. This reminds me of the Crown Tundra, which brought back all the old fossils except for the Sinnoh fossils.

 

[Nicolas721]

Two things to consider:

1. The Indigo Disk has lots of Unova references. Some might say that that makes the Unova remakes too predictable and that it does not fit with Game Freak's way of choosing the region to remake in the last decade, but I say that the topic of Unova will eventually come back anyway so...why don't do it now and take advantage of those references? Additionally, Unova seems easier to handle than Johto, a Johto game without Kanto would receive a lot of criticism and HGSS set a high bar a Let's Go Johto game just would not meet.
2. Making two games was objectively more profitable than just one, just look at the sales. If at the end there's only one game coming it would be very interesting though, as if the ILCA game is absent it would meant GF was not very pleased with BDSP and if the GF game is absent it would meant that GF heard the complaints about SV's launch and would work harder on Gen 10, but considering last year's "quality AND quantity" comment I wouldn't expect either option.

With that said, this would be my three bets in no particular order.

• ILCA does BW remake, GF does B2W2 remake. Very straightforward, new fans explore the Unova story while older fans get an updated version of one of the most beloved games with quality graphics. I know that BW is more popular than B2W2, but if they switch around it would be extremely confusing for new fans to see that the sequel has less quality than the original.
• ILCA does BW remake (with some B2W2 postgame/DLC), GF does Legends Unova. Same as 2021, and with "Legends Unova" I mean either a prequel, sequel or alternate universe but I lean more towards a sequel.
• ILCA does HGSS remake, GF does Legends Unova. Yeah, a wild prediction as it would mean marketing would have to focus on two regions and two generations of mons at once, but with HGSS being extremely beloved I think a remake even in ILCA style would be warmly received. GF knows that Johto is on the people's radar too. Also, it would show once again Game Freak's unpredictability factor and it could be an experiment to see how completely different main series games released close to each other would perform.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Two things to consider:

1. The Indigo Disk has lots of Unova references. Some might say that that makes the Unova remakes too predictable and that it does not fit with Game Freak's way of choosing the region to remake in the last decade, but I say that the topic of Unova will eventually come back anyway so...why don't do it now and take advantage of those references? Additionally, Unova seems easier to handle than Johto, a Johto game without Kanto would receive a lot of criticism and HGSS set a high bar a Let's Go Johto game just would not meet.
2. Making two games was objectively more profitable than just one, just look at the sales. If at the end there's only one game coming it would be very interesting though, as if the ILCA game is absent it would meant GF was not very pleased with BDSP and if the GF game is absent it would meant that GF heard the complaints about SV's launch and would work harder on Gen 10, but considering last year's "quality AND quantity" comment I wouldn't expect either option.

With that said, this would be my three bets in no particular order.

• ILCA does BW remake, GF does B2W2 remake. Very straightforward, new fans explore the Unova story while older fans get an updated version of one of the most beloved games with quality graphics. I know that BW is more popular than B2W2, but if they switch around it would be extremely confusing for new fans to see that the sequel has less quality than the original.
• ILCA does BW remake (with some B2W2 postgame/DLC), GF does Legends Unova. Same as 2021, and with "Legends Unova" I mean either a prequel, sequel or alternate universe but I lean more towards a sequel.
• ILCA does HGSS remake, GF does Legends Unova. Yeah, a wild prediction as it would mean marketing would have to focus on two regions and two generations of mons at once, but with HGSS being extremely beloved I think a remake even in ILCA style would be warmly received. GF knows that Johto is on the people's radar too. Also, it would show once again Game Freak's unpredictability factor and it could be an experiment to see how completely different main series games released close to each other would perform.

Of those three, I think the second is the only realistic possibility.

For the first option, we've seen with ORAS and BDSP that Game Freak/ILCA doesn't care about third version content. It might just be because of the tight deadlines, but Emerald and Platinum content was pretty much absent. Similarly, I don't think we'll get anything BW2. It won't be in the BW remake, and I don't think Game Freak is interested in doing a separate release for BW2. They'd probably have to keep it relatively similar to the original BW2, it seems like Game Freak/TPC insists on the remakes being faithful recreations so players can re-experience the game close to how it originally was. Based on where the games have gone since SwSh and especially with them doing LA instead of a standard remake, I don't think Game Freak really wants to do the remakes anymore. I think they want to keep doing open world games and they want relatively new and modern experiences and continually make new Pokemon, evos, forms, etc. And they can't really make remakes like that, so instead they're probably going to want to do a prequel, sequel, or some other type of new game in an old region so they can reimagine the region the way it should look on a current gen console.

As for the third option, I don't think they can mix and match regions. In addition to Game Freak feeling this disconnect between needing a faithful recreation of the original experience and a modern reimagining up to date with the current hardware, the fans are feeling this too. Some people want the faithful recreation because they were either too young for the original or they want to re-experience the nostalgia. Others want the modern recreation because they'd get bored of trudging through the same game they played. These two desires conflict with each other, and it's irreconcilable with one game, which is why they had two in BDSP and LA, so you can choose whichever one that suits your preferences (or even both). The problem with mixing and matching is that throwing in a second region is that you're adding an extra dimension of preferences, some people might like one region more than the other and that could have nothing to do with the preferences on faithful remake vs. modern recreation. So then you would have preferences for 4 different styles of game, and what if someone wants a faithful recreation of BW or a Legends Johto? They'd be out of luck there. So no, I think if they do an ILCA faithful recreation and a GF Legends game, it has to be for the same region. It's much easier to market and less likely to cause controversy to just focus on one region.

 

[RileyXY1]

I'm not really even sure if we're even gonna see an old region again, but if we are, I'm starting to think based on weird findings in the game files that Unova might be skipped in the remake order and we're gonna jump straight to Kalos.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Yeah, they're not skipping Unova. Unova is far too beloved a region (well really every old region is beloved, but still) and that would be a huge controversy and leaving money on the table if they did. The only question with Unova remakes is whether or not they're releasing this gen on the Switch or 10th gen on the Switch's successor. Game Freak does a lot of funky things to surprise people and we're inevitably going to be wrong about some of the things we're doing, but one thing I'm absolutely certain I'm not wrong about is we will get a Unova game of some kind within the next 5 years. The question is more a matter of when and what form it will take.

 

[Nicolas721]

Of those three, I think the second is the only realistic possibility.

For the first option, we've seen with ORAS and BDSP that Game Freak/ILCA doesn't care about third version content. It might just be because of the tight deadlines, but Emerald and Platinum content was pretty much absent. Similarly, I don't think we'll get anything BW2. It won't be in the BW remake, and I don't think Game Freak is interested in doing a separate release for BW2. They'd probably have to keep it relatively similar to the original BW2, it seems like Game Freak/TPC insists on the remakes being faithful recreations so players can re-experience the game close to how it originally was. Based on where the games have gone since SwSh and especially with them doing LA instead of a standard remake, I don't think Game Freak really wants to do the remakes anymore. I think they want to keep doing open world games and they want relatively new and modern experiences and continually make new Pokemon, evos, forms, etc. And they can't really make remakes like that, so instead they're probably going to want to do a prequel, sequel, or some other type of new game in an old region so they can reimagine the region the way it should look on a current gen console.

B2W2 isn't just any third version. It has many exclusive areas people are going to miss if they aren't included in an Unova game, iconic characters (Rosa is the pretty much the face of Masters and she and Nate got two events last month) and more importantly an unique story that complements BW. Newer fans would be disappointed if they like BW but then see its continuation is locked on a very old console. I've seen many people saying that B2W2 should just not be ignored.

As for the third option, I don't think they can mix and match regions. In addition to Game Freak feeling this disconnect between needing a faithful recreation of the original experience and a modern reimagining up to date with the current hardware, the fans are feeling this too. Some people want the faithful recreation because they were either too young for the original or they want to re-experience the nostalgia. Others want the modern recreation because they'd get bored of trudging through the same game they played. These two desires conflict with each other, and it's irreconcilable with one game, which is why they had two in BDSP and LA, so you can choose whichever one that suits your preferences (or even both). The problem with mixing and matching is that throwing in a second region is that you're adding an extra dimension of preferences, some people might like one region more than the other and that could have nothing to do with the preferences on faithful remake vs. modern recreation. So then you would have preferences for 4 different styles of game, and what if someone wants a faithful recreation of BW or a Legends Johto? They'd be out of luck there. So no, I think if they do an ILCA faithful recreation and a GF Legends game, it has to be for the same region. It's much easier to market and less likely to cause controversy to just focus on one region.

It would cause some debate among the fans, but not enough to harm Game Freak's reputation. Those fans would eventually understand they are in the same boat of people as those who wanted Pokemon Z or and FRLG remake and move on (this sounds like I'm countering my other paragraph, but I think skipping a "game style" is different from ignoring a past game). Also, I've seen a noteworthy number of people that'd rather have no remake than another remake by ILCA.

The main reason why I think BDSP was done was because they wanted to ease new fans into Legends Arceus, so it's true that the synergy between the games would be lost, but like I said that's the kind of crazy experiment I can see Game Freak doing.

 

[Bolt Strike]

B2W2 isn't just any third version. It has many exclusive areas people are going to miss if they aren't included in an Unova game, iconic characters (Rosa is the pretty much the face of Masters and she and Nate got two events last month) and more importantly an unique story that complements BW. Newer fans would be disappointed if they like BW but then see its continuation is locked on a very old console. I've seen many people saying that B2W2 should just not be ignored.

Emerald and Platinum had exclusive areas, iconic characters, and story elements. Didn't stop Game Freak from ignoring them. I see no reason why it won't be the same here. Game Freak doesn't seem to care that there's exclusive content from definitive entries being lost to time. They just seem to work on getting the base experience and little else. Expecting anything more than BW1 all over again is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

It would cause some debate among the fans, but not enough to harm Game Freak's reputation. Those fans would eventually understand they are in the same boat of people as those who wanted Pokemon Z or and FRLG remake and move on (this sounds like I'm countering my other paragraph, but I think skipping a "game style" is different from ignoring a past game). Also, I've seen a noteworthy number of people that'd rather have no remake than another remake by ILCA

Maybe, but it'd be so much easier for them and more profitable to simply focus on one region. The mixing and matching doesn't really benefit them that much.

Again, if they really want multiple regions I think the easiest and most profitable way to do that is get NSO games up and running. Far less effort to port the old games and more revenue because of the yearly subscription fee.

The main reason why I think BDSP was done was because they wanted to ease new fans into Legends Arceus, so it's true that the synergy between the games would be lost, but like I said that's the kind of crazy experiment I can see Game Freak doing.

No one really needed "easing" in to LA. It's its own unique game that doesn't depend on knowing the gameplay or story from DPPt to play it (you do benefit more from playing DPPt first because you better understand the references to present day Sinnoh, but you don't need it, you could easily play it as your first game and not miss anything crucial to the experience). BDSP exists for people who were too young or nostalgic for the original DP to play them on the Switch. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[nickdt]

In terms of remakes, i think Johto is more likely than Unova at this point in time.

Hear me out

The Indigo Disk gave us a lot of Unova related content/characters, as well as the area's in Blueberry Academy, as if they want to say: We are not gonna give you Unova just yet, so you have to settle for this one.

Not only that, but a lot of Indigo Disk Pokemon can be found in Unova.

 

[Die-Hard Dragon Devotee]

I'd rather they not have any new games come out this year, or maybe even next year either. They should take time to plan and develop whatever's coming next, as much as possible, to avoid the hastily-released and glitchy messes that were Scarlet and Violet. Hell, I'd even be okay with them not having any new games this year at all, or even next year. They should hold off on the 10th generation until 2025 anyway, to coincide with the series's 30th anniversary, which I do hope happens. The longer, the better.

 

[nickdt]

I'd rather they not have any new games come out this year, or maybe even next year either. They should take time to plan and develop whatever's coming next, as much as possible, to avoid the hastily-released and glitchy messes that were Scarlet and Violet. Hell, I'd even be okay with them not having any new games this year at all, or even next year. They should hold off on the 10th generation until 2025 anyway, to coincide with the series's 30th anniversary, which I do hope happens. The longer, the better.

The problem is that in its current capacity, the VCG and TCG and too a lesser extent the merch, cannot support itself longer than 3 years.