Speculation Future Pokemon Game Speculation Thread

[a230]

My prediction for what's to come

2024:NSO + Outsourced Gen2 remake
2025:Legend Z-A
2026:Gen 10(it's the 30th anniversary, they can't pass on this)
2027:Gen10 DLC
2028:Outsourced Gen 5 remake
2029:New Legend Game
2030:Gen 11

 

[FelipePR]

Imagine if, because of Gen 10's significance, we got all the GBA and titles and BW to allow for full pokemon transfer from all 10 precious generations, with lots of specific acknowledgements for each...

Keep dreaming if you believe Game Freak would even bother to entertain the idea of putting in all that effort.

 

[Greninjaman]

Keep dreaming if you believe Game Freak would even bother to entertain the idea of putting in all that effort.

Certainly sounds like a lot of work.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Especially the DS games would require so much reworking just to port them. While it's easy to port single-screen games to double-screen systems, the reverse is simply not true. I think that's part of the reason why BDSP were faithful remakes, they were filling in the position of DP because the originals simply couldn't be ported to the Switch without major reworking.

 

[RileyXY1]

This is my prediction for the future of the series until 2030:

2024: Gap Year
2025: Legends ZA (March) and Gen 10 (November)
2026: Gen 10 DLC and Mario 3D All-Stars style rerelease of the first three gens
2027: New Legends Game
2028: Gen 11
2029: Gen 11 DLC
2030: New Legends Game

I believe that traditional remakes are dead and Legends has fully replaced them. I think that if they were still doing them then they would have announced an XY remake to come this holiday season, but they didn't. Plus, I don't think that BDSP was even meant to exist at all, and was only created to fill the Holiday 2021 slot after Legends Arceus was delayed by two months as a result of COVID. I also think that Gen 10 will still follow the usual 3 year gen timeframe, mostly to freshen up the anime, manga, TCG, merch, and the competitive scene with new content. It would just be boring if competitive Pokémon was stuck on Scarlet and Violet for four years in a row.

 

[Poke Dragon]

I believe that the Legends games also won't follow the same order as the traditional remakes, there's just so much potential lore to be had with every region that has not received any Legends game yet that would be wasted potential not to do any about them. But I do agree that they will wait a few more generations before doing a Legends game based on the currently newest region, which is why I doubt any Legends game taking place in Paldea or Galar will happen until the console generation after the Switch's successor.

If the Legends series followed the same order as traditional remakes, we would've gotten a Johto or Unova Legends game, not Kalos. Also, there's no pattern for the Legends games based on which region gets released (this is a response to the people who say only even-numbered generations will get Legends games based on them, because yes, there are those already making false patterns that don't exist), two releases don't make a pattern.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Okay, so there's one thing that actually scares me and it's that there could be a Pokemon remake announcement this year. It scares me because it would most likely be a faithful remake, could be Johto or Unova, but I'm sure everyone agrees that a faithful remake would not be a good choice for either region.

I don't think that they'd announce B/W remakes in the summer. Given the games' popularity and how many people wanted those remakes, I think that they would have announced them on Pokemon Day if they were coming this year. Granted, they would have been pretty overshadowed by Legends Z-A most likely anyway, but I think that if we were going to get those remakes this year, it would have been announced on Pokemon Day. A Johto remake announcement for later in the year wouldn't surprise me in a way, or at least it sounds more plausible by comparison. I love G/S and Johto, but I don't know if it has the same kind of popularity among the fanbase, especially compared to B/W.

There have been main series games announcements after Pokemon Day in the past, so it is plausible that could happen. It's pretty unlikely, especially when Pokemon Day is a more well known and established event for the franchise, but it wouldn't necessarily be impossible for that to happen. I feel like a lot of fans would want a faithful remake of B/W at least given how much they're put on a pedestal among the fanbase.

i think it's way too early to call traditional remakes "dead"
typically they only come every other generation anyway, and i suspect legends is going to be an actual subseries.
it also feels a little early to remake xy imo; kalos' issue most certainly isn't the technological playability (or obtainability; think about how expensive and/or difficult to find copies of some of the earlier games are), it's the obviously unfinished story that left a bad taste in people's mouths.
xy, as of now, doesn't need remakes, which is probably why they're... not being remade. what they needed years ago, and could certainly use now, is a Z version, which happens to be legends z.
in whatever case, i believe one would be jumping the gun to claim that we're not getting any more remakes just because of a (currently) single departure from the norm.
a very welcome one at that

I agree. I feel like remakes are too big of an aspect of the main series for them to be replaced completely with Legends games. Even having another studio work on BD/SP was less about Game Freak not being interested in doing remakes anymore and more like they didn't want to spread their resources even thinner, especially when Legends Arceus might have been seen as a bit of a gamble among the higher ups with how experimental and different it was. I could maybe see them doing more work with other game developers to help on remakes, which would ideally help with their developments on new generations and Legends games as well, but I feel like getting rid of traditional remakes at this point seems pretty unlikely at best.

A proper X/Y remake wouldn't be on the table for at least another decade with the typical pattern for remakes in mind, possibly even longer if they do remake B2/W2. If anything, Kalos feels like the most "recent" region that could have reasonably gotten the Legends treatment. It does have some lore to make an ancient past setting work and the games themselves are ten years old, which would be more than enough time for X/Y to be considered nostalgic. It will probably be some time before we get a Legends game set in Galar or Paldea simply because they're too recent. I forgot how much people really wanted a Z game for years until this announcement happened. Admittedly, I didn't see much appeal for it myself. I like X/Y, but they weren't one of my favorite games in the series and I didn't think getting a third version game was going to really change that. It might have made the Kalos region feel more fleshed out and offered some improvements to the storyline, but it didn't really feel that necessary to me. That being said, I can see why people still wanted Z. You could make a good argument that Kalos got the short end of the stick compared to other regions. Every other region got some kind of expansion whether it is from third version games, sequels or DLC. Kalos didn't get that and if I was more into X/Y, that might bother me more. Using Legends to effectively give fans the Z version that many have wanted is pretty cool and potentially could be quite interesting.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I don't think that they'd announce B/W remakes in the summer. Given the games' popularity and how many people wanted those remakes, I think that they would have announced them on Pokemon Day if they were coming this year. Granted, they would have been pretty overshadowed by Legends Z-A most likely anyway, but I think that if we were going to get those remakes this year, it would have been announced on Pokemon Day.

Yeah, I think if they wanted to hint towards both a traditional remake and Z/A, it would've made more sense to reveal the traditional remake first and reveal Z/A in something like a summer Pokemon Presents, not the other way around. If there was a new game this year, Pokemon Day would've been the time to announce it. As is, probably not. If there's anything, I feel it could be NSO ports. That's small enough that they don't need a long marketing for it, hell they could even shadow drop it if they wanted.

Beyond that though? Again, I feel like it's just copium. They announced a 2025 game that wasn't what they expected and are trying to rationalize that they actually somehow are. Really more likely the truth is simple, but may be a hard pill for some to swallow: they probably aren't working on a Unova game anytime soon, and they probably aren't working on a Johto game anytime soon (aside from maybe GSC on NSO if we're lucky).

A Johto remake announcement for later in the year wouldn't surprise me in a way, or at least it sounds more plausible by comparison. I love G/S and Johto, but I don't know if it has the same kind of popularity among the fanbase, especially compared to B/W.

There have been main series games announcements after Pokemon Day in the past, so it is plausible that could happen. It's pretty unlikely, especially when Pokemon Day is a more well known and established event for the franchise, but it wouldn't necessarily be impossible for that to happen. I feel like a lot of fans would want a faithful remake of B/W at least given how much they're put on a pedestal among the fanbase.

Ehh, the hardcore fans frequenting forums like these like BW, but it didn't really sell as much. In fact, it's the worst selling new generation pair so far. Meanwhile, GS actually still benefited a bit from the initial wave of Pokemania, Pokemon really didn't die down as a fad until 3rd gen. GS dipped a bit from RB for sure, but it still sold above average and was the 2nd highest seller until the Switch games. Now maybe tastes have changed since their original releases, but the average person wouldn't have the data to prove that. You're falling into the trap of basing popularity on the opinions of the hardcore fandom bubble on sites like this one, not what the fanbase as a whole thinks.

I agree. I feel like remakes are too big of an aspect of the main series for them to be replaced completely with Legends games. Even having another studio work on BD/SP was less about Game Freak not being interested in doing remakes anymore and more like they didn't want to spread their resources even thinner, especially when Legends Arceus might have been seen as a bit of a gamble among the higher ups with how experimental and different it was. I could maybe see them doing more work with other game developers to help on remakes, which would ideally help with their developments on new generations and Legends games as well, but I feel like getting rid of traditional remakes at this point seems pretty unlikely at best.

If your theory is correct and it was about conserving resources, then why make LA at all? Especially when it released a mere 10 months before SV? That defeats the purpose. If they wanted to conserve resources they would've just given us BDSP only and then gone straight to SV, LA was kind of a luxury. This reasoning doesn't really hold water.

LA might not be able to replace remakes by themselves, but LA + NSO? That I think could replace remakes. The issues with remakes now is that with them working on drastically stronger hardware than they have in the past, the older games feel fairly outdated. BDSP is kind of evidence of this, because the graphics are technically better and aside from missing Platinum content it does more or less accomplish what a remake is supposed to do, the issue is more that the Switch is capable of doing FAR more than what BDSP offered. But they can't go full fledged DP but in SwSh/SV style because the latter games go for more open environments that are far beyond what the DS could do, if they tried to replicate that in BDSP it wouldn't be DP anymore. And then they've also been dabbling with introducing new Pokemon/forms/evolutions mid-gen and they've been largely reluctant to introduce new Pokemon in remakes (especially in the main games of remakes, if we get any new Pokemon in a remake it was usually in the National Dex post-game), so they probably felt introducing (what later became) Hisuian variants and cross gen evos and all of the new Pokemon added to LA was too much for DP. Meanwhile, the remakes need to have a level of similarity. It needs to be familiar to older fans to satisfy their nostalgia, and it needs to be similar enough that younger fans too young for the originals don't feel like they're missing out. So there's a sort of tug of war going on between the needs of remakes to recreate the experience and the needs of the hardware to provide a modern take on the experience, and I think that's the reason we got 2 Sinnoh games.

So the Legends games are built from the ground up on the new hardware to be a new experience in an old region, so they can't entirely replace a traditional remake, I think we're in agreement on that much. But do we still need these nostalgic feeling recreations with chibi style graphics, no third version content, and copy/pasted nearly everything? Well no. There's a much quicker and cheaper way to make these older experiences accessible again, and that's with emulated ports like VC and NSO. No need to recreate assets or anything, just get the game working on the current system's emulator and infrastructure and boom, the game is back! And that's probably less work than a remake, so you might be able to get more of them on there quicker. I don't think they could just drop all of the Gens 1-3 games at once, but over the course of 2 or 3 years? I could see that. So then you would have the old games accessible for as long as the emulation system is supported by the hardware and you don't have to worry about them excluding third version content since they could just port the third versions. So it would be more beneficial to just port the games rather than remake them. You port them when you just want the old experience accessible again and you do Legends reimagining when you want to do something new that you couldn't do on older hardware. I don't think remakes really have a niche anymore if we have those two, they're the worst of both worlds in a sense.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Ehh, the hardcore fans frequenting forums like these like BW, but it didn't really sell as much. In fact, it's the worst selling new generation pair so far. Meanwhile, GS actually still benefited a bit from the initial wave of Pokemania, Pokemon really didn't die down as a fad until 3rd gen. GS dipped a bit from RB for sure, but it still sold above average and was the 2nd highest seller until the Switch games. Now maybe tastes have changed since their original releases, but the average person wouldn't have the data to prove that. You're falling into the trap of basing popularity on the opinions of the hardcore fandom bubble on sites like this one, not what the fanbase as a whole thinks.

I'm not sure if sale data necessarily indicates how popular games are received. BD/SP sold really well and while I like them, they clearly aren't some of the more beloved or popular remakes in the series. I'm not basing this just from the hardcore fandom bubble. I've seen B/W praised for years. It is pretty typical to see people say that it their favorite generation or where the main series games reached their peak and it isn't just from this site. I can't say if that's how the average person would feel about them and maybe that has changed a lot from when they were first released. I remember a lot of backlash over older Pokemon not being accessible until the post-storyline, to the point where it felt like Game Freak wanted to emphasize to fans in future titles that older Pokemon were indeed available to reassure fans. I just think it's fair to say that they are pretty popular entries despite what the sale numbers may say.

If your theory is correct and it was about conserving resources, then why make LA at all? Especially when it released a mere 10 months before SV? That defeats the purpose. If they wanted to conserve resources they would've just given us BDSP only and then gone straight to SV, LA was kind of a luxury. This reasoning doesn't really hold water.

LA might not be able to replace remakes by themselves, but LA + NSO? That I think could replace remakes. The issues with remakes now is that with them working on drastically stronger hardware than they have in the past, the older games feel fairly outdated. BDSP is kind of evidence of this, because the graphics are technically better and aside from missing Platinum content it does more or less accomplish what a remake is supposed to do, the issue is more that the Switch is capable of doing FAR more than what BDSP offered. But they can't go full fledged DP but in SwSh/SV style because the latter games go for more open environments that are far beyond what the DS could do, if they tried to replicate that in BDSP it wouldn't be DP anymore. And then they've also been dabbling with introducing new Pokemon/forms/evolutions mid-gen and they've been largely reluctant to introduce new Pokemon in remakes (especially in the main games of remakes, if we get any new Pokemon in a remake it was usually in the National Dex post-game), so they probably felt introducing (what later became) Hisuian variants and cross gen evos and all of the new Pokemon added to LA was too much for DP. Meanwhile, the remakes need to have a level of similarity. It needs to be familiar to older fans to satisfy their nostalgia, and it needs to be similar enough that younger fans too young for the originals don't feel like they're missing out. So there's a sort of tug of war going on between the needs of remakes to recreate the experience and the needs of the hardware to provide a modern take on the experience, and I think that's the reason we got 2 Sinnoh games.

So the Legends games are built from the ground up on the new hardware to be a new experience in an old region, so they can't entirely replace a traditional remake, I think we're in agreement on that much. But do we still need these nostalgic feeling recreations with chibi style graphics, no third version content, and copy/pasted nearly everything? Well no. There's a much quicker and cheaper way to make these older experiences accessible again, and that's with emulated ports like VC and NSO. No need to recreate assets or anything, just get the game working on the current system's emulator and infrastructure and boom, the game is back! And that's probably less work than a remake, so you might be able to get more of them on there quicker. I don't think they could just drop all of the Gens 1-3 games at once, but over the course of 2 or 3 years? I could see that. So then you would have the old games accessible for as long as the emulation system is supported by the hardware and you don't have to worry about them excluding third version content since they could just port the third versions. So it would be more beneficial to just port the games rather than remake them. You port them when you just want the old experience accessible again and you do Legends reimagining when you want to do something new that you couldn't do on older hardware. I don't think remakes really have a niche anymore if we have those two, they're the worst of both worlds in a sense.

I don't know if I could see them replacing remakes with ports. It would be easier than doing full remakes, but if they were interested in doing that, I think that they would have done that before, even with how more advanced the Switch is capable compared to the DS in mind. It would be a good way to make third version games available. I think a lot of people who wanted D/P remakes really wanted Platinum remakes, but I think that remakes are too financially successful for Game Freak to replace them with ports. I think that it's possible to have remakes for the nostalgia experience and Legends for a new experimental experience in older regions instead of choosing one or the other.

 

[multiingbe]

Yes; it definitely seems plausible that Legends Z-A will have a different emphasis on trainer battles and due to this it could have an online league. I don't have Switch yet and from what i can remember of online videos of Legends Arceus, it doesn't have anything like that??

Online battling with different styles for moves would be unusual but it depends on whether Z-A could have a different set of styles than Arceus!!

and Legends for a new experimental experience in older regions instead of choosing one or the other.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I'm not sure if sale data necessarily indicates how popular games are received. BD/SP sold really well and while I like them, they clearly aren't some of the more beloved or popular remakes in the series. I'm not basing this just from the hardcore fandom bubble. I've seen B/W praised for years. It is pretty typical to see people say that it their favorite generation or where the main series games reached their peak and it isn't just from this site. I can't say if that's how the average person would feel about them and maybe that has changed a lot from when they were first released. I remember a lot of backlash over older Pokemon not being accessible until the post-storyline, to the point where it felt like Game Freak wanted to emphasize to fans in future titles that older Pokemon were indeed available to reassure fans. I just think it's fair to say that they are pretty popular entries despite what the sale numbers may say.

Maybe, but that argument works both ways so you really can't turn around and say that Unova is more popular than Johto. You need something more definitive to make that claim.

I don't know if I could see them replacing remakes with ports. It would be easier than doing full remakes, but if they were interested in doing that, I think that they would have done that before, even with how more advanced the Switch is capable compared to the DS in mind. It would be a good way to make third version games available. I think a lot of people who wanted D/P remakes really wanted Platinum remakes, but I think that remakes are too financially successful for Game Freak to replace them with ports. I think that it's possible to have remakes for the nostalgia experience and Legends for a new experimental experience in older regions instead of choosing one or the other.

So first of all, for them to port the old games the system needs to be supported, and Game Boy games were not supported on NSO until a year ago. Now you would think Pokemon would be a huge priority so they would be available sooner, but I don't think just one year after GB was added is evidence that they're not interested. There may be marketing/scheduling reasons, or they may be running into delays trying to get it to work with Home or implement online trading.

As for remakes being too financially successful? Well they are, but NSO ports might be even more successful. They cost less to produce and they're paid with a yearly subscription fee, so ports might actually be more profitable for them.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Yes; it definitely seems plausible that Legends Z-A will have a different emphasis on trainer battles and due to this it could have an online league. I don't have Switch yet and from what i can remember of online videos of Legends Arceus, it doesn't have anything like that??

Online battling with different styles for moves would be unusual but it depends on whether Z-A could have a different set of styles than Arceus!!

I don't think that Legends Arceus had any online league. It's possible that they could have something like that for Legends Z-A, but it seems unlikely if the gameplay is going to be drastically different from traditional Pokemon games.

Maybe, but that argument works both ways so you really can't turn around and say that Unova is more popular than Johto. You need something more definitive to make that claim.

Fair enough. My point was more about how Unova is pretty popular more so than just being more popular than Johto specifically. I don't really see as much hype for the second generation compared to the fifth generation, despite the former being more nostalgic. Not to say that it isn't popular or doesn't have its fans, but that I'm just really used to seeing B/W put on more of a pedestal than G/S.

So first of all, for them to port the old games the system needs to be supported, and Game Boy games were not supported on NSO until a year ago. Now you would think Pokemon would be a huge priority so they would be available sooner, but I don't think just one year after GB was added is evidence that they're not interested. There may be marketing/scheduling reasons, or they may be running into delays trying to get it to work with Home or implement online trading.

As for them being too financially successful? Well they are, but NSO ports might be even more successful. They cost less to produce and they're paid with a yearly subscription fee, so ports might actually be more profitable for them.

I didn't say that they aren't interested in doing ports at all. We did get the first two generations available on the 3DS eShop and people have been wanting/expecting them to drop on NSO for awhile. I just don't think that they'd drop remakes in favor of ports partly because they could have been doing that even before the Switch if they were interested in doing so. I'm also not too confident about ports being more successful. They would be cheaper to make by comparison, but I'm not sure if being covered by a yearly subscription fee would make them more worthwhile in the long run than remakes. I don't know how much profits they'd get from a yearly subscription compared to people buying individual games either. Remakes are more expensive to make, but with how much they tend to sell, it's probably seen as pretty worthwhile in the long run.

 

[Adelon]

I don't think we're getting remakes of Johto or Unova in 2024. I have a feeling the critical backlash against BDSP might have scared The Pokemon Company away from the idea of making any more traditional remakes. Though tbh I lowkey want a traditional remake of X and Y that I can play since I missed out on the Kalos region.

 

[RileyXY1]

I don't think we're getting remakes of Johto or Unova in 2024. I have a feeling the critical backlash against BDSP might have scared The Pokemon Company away from the idea of making any more traditional remakes. Though tbh I lowkey want a traditional remake of X and Y that I can play since I missed out on the Kalos region.

I don't think they'll get remakes ever.

 

[guzmania]

I don't think they'll get remakes ever.

honestly i'm having a hard time believing that they're supposedly never getting any new non-legends content ever

come 10, 20 years down the line and it would just be an extremely odd (and pretty dumb, if you ask me) decision to choose not to make the original johto/unova storylines readily available for new generations.
god knows we can't firmly rely on nso for that. and say whatever you want about remakes in the next few years, but they're still more exponentially likely than direct ports

 

[Bolt Strike]

Fair enough. My point was more about how Unova is pretty popular more so than just being more popular than Johto specifically. I don't really see as much hype for the second generation compared to the fifth generation, despite the former being more nostalgic. Not to say that it isn't popular or doesn't have its fans, but that I'm just really used to seeing B/W put on more of a pedestal than G/S.

It doesn't really matter if it's "put on a pedestal". What matters is how many fans like it, not how highly they rate it. A decent game is just as good as an amazing game if everyone still likes it enough to buy it.

I just don't think that they'd drop remakes in favor of ports partly because they could have been doing that even before the Switch if they were interested in doing so.

Again, no they couldn't have. They need an emulator to run them, so unless they want to make their own custom emulator (which wouldn't be worthwhile), they have to wait for Nintendo to add the relevant systems to theirs. And as it stands, GB and GBA were not added to NSO until February 2023, so that's the earliest they could've given us NSO ports.

 

[RileyXY1]

honestly i'm having a hard time believing that they're supposedly never getting any new non-legends content ever

come 10, 20 years down the line and it would just be an extremely odd (and pretty dumb, if you ask me) decision to choose not to make the original johto/unova storylines readily available for new generations.
god knows we can't firmly rely on nso for that. and say whatever you want about remakes in the next few years, but they're still more exponentially likely than direct ports

BDSP was literally handed off to another studio and rushed to high heaven and now Legends ZA is not even being accompanied by a traditional XY remake at all.

 

[guzmania]

and now Legends ZA is not even being accompanied by a traditional XY remake at all.

i already wrote a whole thing on this but i really don't believe that signifies anything at all except for seemingly establishing legends as a recurring thing

 

[Sheep40]

BW came out at around the same time as FFXIII. It suffered a lot of the same commercial problems in eerie parallels.

Shot in the foot by the demands of nostalgic "fans" (BW was considered by genwunners to be the worst in the series, whilst FFnatics were very clear they wanted an FFVII remake and not a new game)

Plots were widely reviled (genwunners deemed BW too complex. FFnatics did not like dune-esque exploration dumps).

pacing loops were generally considered severe downgrades (BW lacked a postgame entirely, FFXIII was linear until the endgame).

Both sold quite low due to this. Whilst genfivers replaced genwunners (at least temporarily), the amount of revulsion on the english-speaking internet at a recent ad that treated the OG XY (which repeated pretty much every problem BW had but added many of it's own) really tells me we are not getting out of toxic fandom critical mass anytime soon.

Expect video essays attacking the entire concept of GEN X before any concrete news comes out.

 

[RileyXY1]

BW came out at around the same time as FFXIII. It suffered a lot of the same commercial problems in eerie parallels.

Shot in the foot by the demands of nostalgic "fans" (BW was considered by genwunners to be the worst in the series, whilst FFnatics were very clear they wanted an FFVII remake and not a new game)

Plots were widely reviled (genwunners deemed BW too complex. FFnatics did not like dune-esque exploration dumps).

pacing loops were generally considered severe downgrades (BW lacked a postgame entirely, FFXIII was linear until the endgame).

Both sold quite low due to this. Whilst genfivers replaced genwunners (at least temporarily), the amount of revulsion on the english-speaking internet at a recent ad that treated the OG XY (which repeated pretty much every problem BW had but added many of it's own) really tells me we are not getting out of toxic fandom critical mass anytime soon.

Expect video essays attacking the entire concept of GEN X before any concrete news comes out.

They do this every gen now.