• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

SwSh There are petitions about Gamefreak fixing the 'Galar Pokedex' thing

I could maybe excuse the whole "some Pokemon won't be in ShSw" thing if it meant that other parts of these games would be handled well to make up for that, but just by looking at all the trailers and screenshots for ShSw, I really feel like Gamefreak isn't giving it their all. The graphics hardly look better than 3DS graphics (especially the battles) and I feel like Gamefreak have grown increasingly complacent lately. I hope these games flop so that they'll receive a wake up call and stop pissing around.
 
Sword/Shield still has old Pokemon in it though. And as long as they're still around, there will be people who will still use them.
That’s not what I mean. There are a number of older Pokemon I’ve never thought about using in my team, but I might if they’re in the Galar Dex and my other favorites are not. I’m sure this applies to other players.
 
That’s not what I mean. There are a number of older Pokemon I’ve never thought about using in my team, but I might if they’re in the Galar Dex and my other favorites are not. I’m sure this applies to other players.
I dunno, I, and I'm sure a lot of other people, already make it a point to not use Pokemon we've used on past teams. This has got me experimenting with Pokemon I otherwise would never have touched like Xatu, Clefable, Dewgong, Rampardos, etc. And then there's stuff like nuzlockes, monotype runs, and the like that get people using Pokemon they may not have already used.

So basically, we don't need to be forced to not use our favorites all the time, to not use our favorites all the time.
 
While I fully understand the outrage amongst the fans, especially seeing as how we're transitioning to the big screen here, I think would lean more towards the devil's advocate side of this, especially after I was worried about it with the Let's Go games, but in the end those actually exceeded my expectations and I felt like I could enjoy playing with many of the original 151 more than I ever have in the past decade or so.

Given that GameFreak wants to make the battle animations up to par for a full-fledged 3D Pokmeon adventure on the big screen, then I think Masuda is probably telling the truth when he said that this was something that was not a question of whether, but when, because I can't imagine that it's not time consuming to code in 800-1000 or more Pokémon along with all of their animations from battle actions to all the various Affection-based stuff.

Megas and Z-Moves being entirely excluded is the part that I have more issues with personally, but at the same time I understand that those were associated with the Kalos & Alola regions respectively, and so I'm hoping that Dynamax (along with Gigantomax, if that leak continues to be correct) will prove to be the best of all three - maybe it'll a bit more flexible than Mega Evolution, do more than Z-Moves did to make some terrible Pokémon viable, as well as be less of a game-breaker than many Mega Evolutions turned out to be (Remember how Mega Rayquaza was actually considered too OP for the Uber tier on Smogon?).

And I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that 2020 will be the year that we finally see Sinnoh remakes...on the Switch!

And BTW, looking at this list that Serebii has kindly put together of Pokémon already confirmed to be in the Galar Dex, I'd say about half of my Top 50 are in there already, and most of the others are either Kanto Pokémon I've already caught in Let's Go, or were in the Platinum Sinnoh Dex and therefore would likely reappear in a remake.
 
Last edited:
Why is Mew listed there? Unless there is going to be an event for one?

(I haven't been paying too much attention to Sword/Shield except for press release, trailers, and when it shows up in Directs.)
 
Why is Mew listed there? Unless there is going to be an event for one?

(I haven't been paying too much attention to Sword/Shield except for press release, trailers, and when it shows up in Directs.)
The Poke Ball Plus has been confirmed to be able to transfer it in.
 
Here’s my thing. I don’t need or even want to be able to see all 800 past Pokémon in the Wild Area. I could care less whether or not Houndour shows up in the overworld or at all during the main game, because I honestly don’t care that much about Houndour in general.

I want to have my Houndour in the game. Mine specifically. That’s what stings about this. It’s not about regional fidelity or even about using new Pokémon or whatever. I want to transfer the Pokémon that I spent sweat and tears collecting and training.

To that end, I wouldn’t care if Home let me transfer at all until the post-game (like Gens IV-V) or as soon as I get my Pokédex (like Gens VI-VII.) My issue is that they’re not coding the models into the game at all.

I can (and do) play the main story using region specific Pokémon —at least in the first run— but the post-game and any following playthroughs shouldn’t impose artificial limitations on me that I don’t choose myself. That may come off as entitled, but it’s literally how the franchise has worked since its inception.
 
Last edited:
I think that we have to blame GF and Nintendo on different measures and times. Nintendo sells their consoles grounded on their IP so PKMN is a must for every new console, more so with the power the series has. As for GF, at first they might would want to stop making it (at GSC) but they had to do more and perhaps they thought that doing it would allow them to have more resources and make other games (this can be seen recently on some declarations in which they say they are focused on a non-PKMN game) but due to the popularity of the series and what I've said about Nintendo, they can't be "released".
If this goes on, we'll perhaps have a situation like Konami vs Kojima!! Again, the stories of Mega Flygon, Sugimori's artist block are evidences of tiredness.
Even if a new game was necessary to sell Switch.... were Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon, for example? Sun/Moon were released in 2016, while Switch released in early 2017. I'm not sure when exactly, but I'm pretty sure Game Freak got the Switch kits before Switch released. What exactly is a good reason to make Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon to release in late 2017 when all the time and effort used to work on these games could've easily been put into Sword/Shield already? Even if they let one team work on this, and another on that, USUM still took people, time and effort that could've went elsewhere and ended in a possibly better situation now. But it didn't.
You can make theories to blame whoever you want (Nintendo, TPCi) but the thing is, I don't see the same issues Pokémon has applying to other Nintendo IPs, so I'm not entirely sold on Nintendo just forcing them. There are definitely bigger issues than "Game Freak is incompetent, it's all on Game Freak, they should burn in hell!" or whatever one may think in frustration, and not 100% of the blame is with Game Freak.

Definitely said it earlier already, but even if what they do would be utter bs, it still prints good money and (up until now) people didn't complain. So why change a thing, if it seemingly works out? Artist block isn't directly related to being tired, either. I'm not saying that people should put 100% of their time and work into Pokémon games just to make the games better, and I definitely support Game Freak to develop things that aren't Pokémon to explore and grow. But this just doesn't work together with their currently tight release schedule, they need to rethink that.

To the fandom, maybe. But this sort of thing is what worries a lot of people about a digital-only future, which is what the gaming industry seems to be heading into.

I'm neutral on that subject, but I do get the same concerns.
I'm sorta torn on this. I moved a lot when I was younger due to family issues, and were in situations with no internet a lot. It really made me value owning physical copies (or at least files with back ups) of anything and not relying on streaming/cloud systems.
On the other hand I also love my digital library on my PS4 and not having to switch discs whenever I want to go into a different game. :|

I can (and do) play the main story using region specific Pokémon —at least in the first run— but the post-game and any following playthroughs shouldn’t impose artificial limitations on me that I don’t choose myself. That may come off as entitled, but it’s literally how the franchise has worked since its inception.
Imo it's not that entitled to simply ask for something that's been a core of a franchise since almost always. It's pretty much one of the key things that made Pokémon stand out from other monster raising franchises - you could always take your Pokémon along with you to the next adventure.

---

In general, I'm not satisfied with the excuse of cutting Pokémon to make the ones that are in more expressive (or however they put it).
One issue that I personally saw with this matter was when X/Y released. As a kid, I had Colosseum, and later Battle Revolution and if you look at the Pokémon there, when they were in battle and you were choosing your moves etc., they just looked more lively. A lot of them had poses that just looked "ready to attack on your command" which is just appropriate for the situation. Not to mention that in PBR, for physical moves, as far as I remember, Pokémon moved up to their opponent to actually touch it. Overall, the Pokémon just felt more lively.
Then X/Y came, went 3D (which I, especially at the time, thought is so cool) and the models don't look bad but just look at them in battle - they are plainly standing around, breathing, for most of them. It's boring, it's lifeless, it's plain. I was still spoiled by the 2D games having new sprites every gen, so I kinda figured that'd be worked on - I mean, the models can stay, sure, but you can change the poses, and alter the idle animations to express the Pokemon better as well as improving the combat animations. But that never happened.
Even on Switch with SW/SH, we still didn't even reach PBR (which was in Wii) levels.
I'm well aware that PBR (and Colosseum) were developed by Genius Sonority, not by Game Freak. But why, just why then don't they get Genius Sonority to work on these things for them anymore? They did develop Shuffle in 2015, so it's not like they aren't doing any Pokémon-related things anymore.

I really don't mean to come off as trying to tell Game Freak what to do, overall it's their decision - but also it's mine whether I like the result or not, and ultimately my opinion decides whether or not they get my precious money. Those lacking 60 bucks will sure hurt them a lot. :p
 
To be fair, they probably had to make the animations in XY simple because of how they were pushing the hardware. You also have to remember that there weren't just single battles, but also double battles and horde battles. And the more models you have on screen, the more it starts to add up. Even encountering Yanma in a horde battle is enough to make the game significantly lag. And then SM went and pushed the hardware even further.

So having said that, Switch should be more than powerful enough to not have that issue. But then you see that the animations still aren't much better from before. Plus the fact that the returning Pokemon keep the same models and animations from the last two generations. The claim that they're cutting Pokemon to compromise for more graphical fidelity is just rubbish.
 
I gave that list a look over and tried to get some "by the numbers" facts.

We already have 35/151 Gen 1 Pokemon confirmed for SwSh, a good 20%. (I'd personally argue we can bump that up to 41, since the Squirtle and Bulbasaur lines would logically be included if the Charmander line is, but I guess that's not a sure thing) By comparison, Gen 2 has 19, Gen 3 has 20, Gen 4 has 30, Gen 5 has 28, Gen 6 has 19, and Gen 7 has 14. So, it's close in some cases, but not all, and Gen 1 still clearly comes out on top. And of the 130 Pokemon that weren't introduced in Gen 1, 10 are prevos or evolutions of other Pokemon.

That's definitely better than I expected, but it's still Gen 1 getting the biggest share, even though they just had LGPE. Although, speaking of LGPE, if the animations/models are mostly just tweaking those, I wouldn't be upset for them all to get in-might as well get all the easy ones done, right?
 
so I was discussing this situation with friends, and one of them raised a point. If enough people boycotted the games and it hurt sales enough, would the message really get through, or would the bigwigs just decide to stop the production of the main series and just focus on the anime, merchandise, sidegames, etc? I can't pretend to know much about business, so I dunno what would actually happen.
 
  1. The message should be pretty clear already from complaints on social media.
  2. Low Home subscription numbers would get the message across loud and clear.
  3. They are not going to stop making the games anytime soon no matter what. Realistically, the sales aren't going to be affected by more than 10%, which may be enough for them to reconsider, but definitely not to give up altogether.
 
To be fair, they probably had to make the animations in XY simple because of how they were pushing the hardware. You also have to remember that there weren't just single battles, but also double battles and horde battles. And the more models you have on screen, the more it starts to add up. Even encountering Yanma in a horde battle is enough to make the game significantly lag. And then SM went and pushed the hardware even further.

So having said that, Switch should be more than powerful enough to not have that issue. But then you see that the animations still aren't much better from before. Plus the fact that the returning Pokemon keep the same models and animations from the last two generations. The claim that they're cutting Pokemon to compromise for more graphical fidelity is just rubbish.
Fair enough. Then again, one might question why horde battles had to be yet another thing just to be dropped, anyway. So I'll get how maybe on 3DS it just wasn't possible to make good animations (although, speaking fairly, would a non-generic-standing pose really be that much less simple? I'm not meaning more elaborate idle animations, just different stances for Pokemon, like Espeon in Col/XD/PBR sitting, or Blaziken having a just different pose.) but...now it's Switch. I'm not asking for 4k, beautiful over-the-top animations, I'm asking for a Pokemon to run up to another and physically touch it when using Scratch or Double Kick. Not really using the foot (or hand) for specific moves could then be another thing to complain about, but just any steps in that regard would be welcome imo.

The same models isn't that much of a problem in general (they're okay, for the most part, in my opinion) but changing up poses to give the feel that using different sprites back then had should really not be too much to ask for. I'd also make the bold claim that the Pokémon fanbase in general cares less about graphical fidelity than the actual Pokémon in the game. Not saying graphics aren't important, but Pokémon isn't the most beautiful game graphically, and it never really will be, and it's fine.

And seems like most people agree on one thing - on the 3DS game, certain corners being cut is understandable due to hardware limitations, but now on Switch it's...just really not.

EDIT: [kinda forgot to quote this, welp]
1. The message should be pretty clear already from complaints on social media.
Complaints, the like/dislike ratio, and everything all around. Even if it's not the majority complaining (can't speak about that, since I don't have exact numbers to draw from), it's loud enough to leave any kind of impact.
2. Low Home subscription numbers would get the message across loud and clear.
Exactly. Imagine maybe 5% of the people who bought SW/SH using Home. (exaggeration, but eh.)
3. They are not going to stop making the games anytime soon no matter what. Realistically, the sales aren't going to be affected by more than 10%, which may be enough for them to reconsider, but definitely not to give up altogether.
Giving up this easily would be a really stupid decisions, when you can still fix things, or follow up with a better game to win people back. How sales are affected I personally think will be not exactly a high number, specifically because there's players in general who don't care about that issue, players who buy the games despite it (I'm guilty of that), kids who don't really keep up with news, get the game, just to then complain and/or new players who got a Switch already for BOTW or Mario, saw Detective Pikachu and only now pick up the games. Not everyone would join the boycott, but it still may be a good enough impact to make Game Freak reconsider.
 
Last edited:
Since we're talking about sales now, I thought I would try looking for sales numbers with each major Pokemon game. I found this on Reddit, though I have no idea how accurate it is. (This was posted a year ago.)

It's not surprising that sales dropped significantly after Gen 2 (I'm surprised by how little Crystal sold though), What is interesting though is the gradual dips beginning with XY. I'm curious where Sw/Sh will end up being after several years on the market.

 
Since we're talking about sales now, I thought I would try looking for sales numbers with each major Pokemon game. I found this on Reddit, though I have no idea how accurate it is. (This was posted a year ago.)

It's not surprising that sales dropped significantly after Gen 2 (I'm surprised by how little Crystal sold though), What is interesting though is the gradual dips beginning with XY. I'm curious where Sw/Sh will end up being after several years on the market.


I think it really depends on whether or not they patch in the rest of the Pokémon in future updates. If they do and they announce that they will well before the game comes out, i could easily see Pokémon Sword and Shield selling at the very least 16 million copies and more likely 18+ million copies considering how well other Nintendo entries on Switch are selling compared to entries on other consoles. If they stick to their guns, though, then I don't know where Sw/Sh will end up. I could see it selling around 16 million copies or so, similar to XY and SM, but considering the backlash we're seeing, I could also see it selling significantly less, possibly being the lowest selling main line series game (note that I'm not counting remakes, or second/third versions in that).
 
Since we're talking about sales now, I thought I would try looking for sales numbers with each major Pokemon game. I found this on Reddit, though I have no idea how accurate it is. (This was posted a year ago.)

It's not surprising that sales dropped significantly after Gen 2 (I'm surprised by how little Crystal sold though), What is interesting though is the gradual dips beginning with XY. I'm curious where Sw/Sh will end up being after several years on the market.

Statistics pic
That's really interesting and clearly shows a trend tbh.
If you add it together for the gens [minus remakes] (in mil)
Gen 1: 46
Gen 2: 29 (63% of gen 1)
Gen 3: 22 (48%)
Gen 4: 26 (56%)
Gen 5: 23 (50%)
Gen 6: 16 (35%) [a third version would have probably boosted it to over 40%, though]
Gen 7: 21 (46%)
Excluding gen 3 (which is an oddball) and gen 6 (due to no third version/sequel) there's gradual dips since always, step by step. That should show that Pokémon needs to get its stuff together if they want to change that trend.

Including remakes, that's 70% for gen 3, 83% for gen 4, 50% stays for gen 5, 63% for gen 6 and 46% stays for gen 7 since it shows no data for Let's Go. It looks clearly better with remakes (probably why they keep doing them), but even including remakes, the dips are still there.

Pretty sure it's to a good portion related to competition. There's a lot of games releasing nowadays (much more than in gen 1 times), so people have to pick what they can and what they can't spend their time & money on, and their choice seems to fall less and less on Pokémon.

Think I'll expect something between 10 and 14 million copies for Sword/Shield.
 
It should also be pointed out that the main series Pokemon games aren't AAA titles. And being that they are also developed by a small studio, it could be said that they probably don't have huge development funding. So it may be that these numbers, however small, are still profitable enough if Game Freak isn't spending a lot to begin with. It's certainly enough for them to continue doing the same thing for the last several generations.
 
It should also be pointed out that the main series Pokemon games aren't AAA titles. And being that they are also developed by a small studio, it could be said that they probably don't have huge development funding. So it may be that these numbers, however small, are still profitable enough if Game Freak isn't spending a lot to begin with. It's certainly enough for them to continue doing the same thing for the last several generations.
Sure, but if you let a decline keep going, eventually you'd still reach zero (and in this case, the zero being the profit minus the costs to make the games) so at the very least I feel like one should try to keep sales constant, just to make sure.
And having a loyal fanbase really helps with that, so alienating them ("let's cut off old Pokémon all of a sudden from our games while we already announced to replace our Pokémon storage app that was said to be future proof with a new one!", cutting post-game content including battle frontier, ...) in favour of attracting new people is...kind of risky.
 
And I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that 2020 will be the year that we finally see Sinnoh remakes...on the Switch!
Not giving a break is not going to help these concerns.

And BTW, looking at this list that Serebii has kindly put together of Pokémon already confirmed to be in the Galar Dex, I'd say about half of my Top 50 are in there already, and most of the others are either Kanto Pokémon I've already caught in Let's Go, or were in the Platinum Sinnoh Dex and therefore would likely reappear in a remake.
That’s not a good thing. There should be ideally as less of an overlap with the Sinnoh Dex as possible since Masuda has said that it’s a policy going forward in future titles. As few Pokémon should be left out in a Generation as possible- and the acceptable amount the 'few' should reach- zero.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom