Official Pokémon Sword and Shield speculation thread (Updated June 5th, 2019)

[Jukain]

Putting the pokemon in shouldn't be an issue.

Everything else...we would need to rewrite the entire code from scratch. Evaluate what is redundant or unnecessary. We would need them to actually listen to someone, though. Even then, it would take another few years to do anything.

 

[Oriden]

I think it came from or was fueled by articles like these. Game Freak Is More Than Just A Pokémon Developer

XD Man I don't know why anyone would take that article as meaning that they're sick of pokemon. One of the quotes even says “Yeah, making Pokémon is lots of fun, but I felt like I’d like to make at least one original game I could call mine. It’s because of Pokémon that we’re able to make this [Giga Wrecker].”

Also holyshit does GameFreak sound like an amazing company to work at. They let their developers work on their own projects for other platforms besides Nintendo! That's so genius and supportive- they're less likely to feel burnt out and wanting to hate the Pokemon franchise if they're allowed to stretch their creative limbs on their own ideas too.

 

[Boss1708]

BW2 will forever be my favorite

Same here.

In my case, it's Emerald = HGSS = BW2.

I love these 3 games, and my perfect Pokémon game would be a combination of these 3 pieces of art.

 

[BackSet]

For some reason, right now I'm thinking of that like sonic kid from that video. I don't know why but it's definitely something related to the Pokemon fandom.

 

[BackSet]

ORAS was the best Pokemon game. Fight me,

Same here.

In my case, it's Emerald = HGSS = BW2.

I love these games, and my perfect Pokémon game would be a combination of these 3.

 

[Boss1708]

ORAS was the best Pokemon game. Fight me,

I remember when I used to think the same way (back in 2015/2016), and I feel embarrassed, tbh. As much as I forced myself to like ORAS, I eventually came to the conclusion that ORAS was an insult to hardcore Hoenn fans.

And it's not only noticeable in the big flaws, like the glaring omission of the Battle Frontier. It's also evident in the small details. Like how they removed the Berry Blending mini game. And more importantly, the fact that if I am playing ORAS, and I suddenly want to rematch the Hoenn Gym Leaders, I have to go and rematch them in Emerald or BW2, because you can't rematch them in ORAS.

 

[Darkrai8674]

Same here.

In my case, it's Emerald = HGSS = BW2.

I love these 3 games, and my perfect Pokémon game would be a combination of these 3 pieces of art.

Mine is this with the addition of Platinum

 

[Plubio]

I don't wanna play the Devil's advocate nor I think cutting off Pokémon is excusable or good but most of you fail to realize Game Freak had the same development time for Sword and Shield than for a 3DS game.

It's stupidly easy to sit down on a chair in front of your computer harrasing developers instead of thinking why they had to do that in the first place. I'm pretty sure nobody on Game Freak wanted to do this.

The "animation work and balance issues" is just PR talking. Something had to be said and they just went with that stupid excuse. What else Game Freak could say? "Ah yes we're cutting Pokémon because we're literally forced to bake out a new generation every three years due to the brand popularity and because most of our fans couldn't imagine a 2018 without a game nor 2019 without another so yeah please understand"? lol

"They have a lot of money!!!" this thing is totally bullshit.
Pokémon, indeed, makes a ton of money, but we don't know how much of that money goes into Game Freak's pocket. Remember Pokémon IP is divided between Nintendo, TPC and GF/Creatures. Pokémon GO and merchandise in general generate much more money than the main games themselves.

"Then hire more people!!!" yes, and they've been hiring more people in the recent years. You can't just open a jar and spit out 300 developers.
Also, sometimes hiring more people is rather problematic than helpful. They clearly need to outsource a bit more, yeah.

To resume: no, I'm not saying the backslash is wrong — it needs to be done. We have a reason to be angry, but show it on a more human manner. Be angry, but understand why they have to do that and wonder if they will be able to fix this shit in the future. We are talking about a game that literally can't be delayed because that will literally make everything that works around it to tear apart.

That's like my two cents tho.

 

[Ambrose7]

Same here.

In my case, it's Emerald = HGSS = BW2.

I love these 3 games, and my perfect Pokémon game would be a combination of these 3 pieces of art.

BW, BW2 and HGSS for me :3 love them.

I read that and I’m pretty sure that the ‘GameFreak wants to make a new franchise’ part was even separate from the ‘I know this guy at TPCi’ part.

It’s unreliable at best, and hate and fearmongering at worst.
It feels a bit hilarious that I’m saying this about a video game.

Lol that's exactly what's going on. Go to the Pkmn subreddit or any Facebook group and there are people complaining about every single aspect of the new games. Even the ones which we have known since the February trailer. The Dexit announcement basically brought all this out. It's a bit tiring tbh.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

It's stupidly easy to sit down on a chair in front of your computer harrasing developers

Thankfully almost no one on these forums seems to be doing it.

Snatching Pokemon from GameFreak is something which I find a bit uncalled for. Doesn’t help that they’re due for a break for a long time now.

 

[Plubio]

Thankfully almost no one on these forums seems to be doing it.

Yeah, I'm not focusing anyone in this forums with that statement, thankfully.
But it's quite easy to look around the net and find constant attacks to individuals, which is quite sad :/

 

[Boss1708]

You know, I have just realized that Pokémon has become too big for Game Freak to control. I think this is the underlying problem that we are not analysing properly.

What I mean is that, even if Game Freak were willing to postpone the release date of SwSh for another year (with the purpose of offering a more complete and hq product), I don't think they would be allowed to by their partners. Simply because too many external people and companies depend on them now.

If they postponed the game, then the Anime, Spin-off games, TCG and Pokémon merchandise would all have their schedules disrupted as a chain reaction.

What I'm trying to get at, is that TPCi and Nintendo would probably ask Game Freak not to do postpone the game. And TPCi + Nintendo own 2/3 of the whole business.

 

[FaeKing17]

I think now that they're on the switch they should really change their whole development and release schedule. Taking more time and not trying to release a game every year.

 

[Kallyle]

You know, I have just realized that Pokémon has just become too big for Game Freak to control. I think this is the underlying problem that we are not analysing properly.

What I mean is that, even if Game Freak were willing to postpone the release date of SwSh for another year, I don't think they would be allowed to do it. Simply because too many people depend on them now.

If they did that, then the Anime, Spin-off games, TCG and Pokémon merchandise would all have their schedules disrupted as a chain reaction.

That's exactly what I think ended up happening: a small company like Game Freak can't handle all of the creatures and mechanics they've made if they have to/chose to fit in a yearly release schedule, especially if they want to make other franchises. I beleive I mentioned it in this thread in the past, so I won't go into too much more detail, but I do think that all of these rumors/speculation combined with business practice discussion have proved that Pokémon has essentially out-evolved Game Freak at this point. I honestly see it as more of a burden to them as a company regardless of it being a cash cow.

 

[Oriden]

You know, I have just realized that Pokémon has just become too big for Game Freak to control. I think this is the underlying problem that we are not analysing properly.

What I mean is that, even if Game Freak were willing to postpone the release date of SwSh for another year, I don't think they would be allowed to do it. Simply because too many people depend on them now.

If they did that, then the Anime, Spin-off games, TCG and Pokémon merchandise would all have their schedules disrupted as a chain reaction.

Eh... I don't think that it's really too big for them to control, it's more a matter that they have to make plans to alter their schedule well in advance so that the other branches of the franchise can compensate. This dex thing also came from the assumption that fans would rather not wait for games, so they chugged ahead with a solution that would allow them to release within that assumed desired timeframe. I feel that this outcry that resulted may cause them to alter their plans, so I honestly do expect some positive changes to happen going forward, even if one of those changes means that a generation lasts for 5 years instead of 3.

 

[Shrapnel Stars]

I think now that they're on the switch they should really change their whole development and release schedule. Taking more time and not trying to release a game every year.

This. Even with it's popularity, nobody asked them to make a game every year, and I'd be fine if it wasn't every year, as well. Even with this game, I really think it would be best for them to delay it. Nintendo pressuring them into a release is not an excuse for the quality. It just makes Nintendo at fault for what we have now, too. They needed more time to make this game.

Mario doesn't have a major release every single year, and neither does Zelda, but people still love and support those franchises. Pokemon should be in the same category.

 

[Oriden]

You know, since they already introduced the idea that new pokemon and forms can be added mid-generation, they could easily toss in a few biscuits mid-gen to give the other media branches something to feed on if they decided to extend the development of new gens out by a couple more years. That would allow them to still add new things to support new merchandise and such without having to go all out with new games in a short amount of time.

This could extend to the mobile apps too (yeah, I already hear the groans happening)- Meltan was essentially a Pokemon GO distribution. If they did similar things with other spin-offs, even non-mobile ones by other developers, they would have plenty of connected small fodder to keep things fresh and interesting over a longer period of time without occupying much of their own resources or compromising the security of new projects. Because giving an outside company knowledge of just one pokemon design is never going to result in a massive game-spoiling leak.

 

[AngryBinacle]

They should just take another good look at their businessmodel. One with solid updates/DLC's could be good and far more pleasing.

 

[Boss1708]

I feel that this outcry that resulted may cause them to alter their plans.

Haha, I don't know

 

[Joker901]

However, there have been reports lately that GF is tired of making Pokemon games and want to do something else instead.

Guys, stop paraphrasing what GF says. They never said they are tired of pokemon. They said they are focusing more on other games rather than only on pokemon, which is something different. If I have to give my own interpretation to this, they don't want to be only considered Pokemon makers but games developers that make pokemon and other games too. I still have to understand how they will cover all these projects, but I am not against It (unless next pokemon games will suffer for the lack of resources).