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Spoilers Pokémon UNITE

Thoughts on the announcement of Pokémon Unite?

  • Can't wait!

    Votes: 3 4.3%
  • It looks okay.

    Votes: 11 15.9%
  • Meh...

    Votes: 13 18.8%
  • Pass.

    Votes: 42 60.9%

  • Total voters
    69
1) Their audience is everyone, not just or primarily kids and pre-teens. The fact that they keep ignoring us doesn't mean they don't consider us their audience. Charizard has 100000 forms because they know there are fans of gen 1 who played the games in 1996 (what they don't know is that they made us hate Charizard). The problem of the games is that they try to appeal to everyone and fail pleasing anyone. Sword and Shield are mainly focused on competitiveness. TPC knows its audience has grown up people too.

Their general audience is everyone their primary audience is children first and foremost. Everything they produce is first and foremost geared towards children. You cannot tell me that their emphases aren't on children, For christ's sake, they made an entire mobile game dedicated to getting kids to brush their teeth. TPCi knows who buys their games, toys, apps, DVDs, etc. and it's children. They are their bread and butter and they'll cater to them first and foremost. Do they like the fact that the older fans are still dedicated and that they are also interested? Of course, they do. They'll throw bones to the older fans to thank them for their loyalty but older fans are in no way their priority and it'd be foolish to assume that we are their target demographic.

2) They literally said they would have never made DLC for Pokemon when they were actually working on the DLCs at that exact moment. In an interview, it was stated that the dlcs were not a result of the fans' requests because they were already working on them. Their words, not mine. And in any case, they could have simply said: "free update with more pokemon" which is what we got in the end. They just chose revolution over truth.

The interview with InsideGamer that you a referring to makes no mention of DLC whatsoever. Masuda says the following: “We currently have no plans to make the Pokemon that are missing from the Galar Pokedex available in-game. This is an approach that we want to continue within future Pokemon games. Up until now, it hasn’t been possible to encounter every Pokemon in every game, so people had to transfer them from old games to the new game, by using Pokemon Bank for example.”

Now it's understandable to extrapolate from that statement to mean that they had no plans about DLC but now knowing what we know the reason he said he what he said was to advertise Pokemon Home, maintain a surprise factor about the expansion pass, and not to give a false hope that EVERY single Pokemon would be returning. Also, the term revolution is definitely dramatic. Online outrage in the grand scheme of things meant absolutely nothing and Sword and Shield are already in the Top 3 of best selling mainline games in less than a year of being on the market on a console with a lower install base than the DS and the 3DS. There was hardly a "revolution" it was just a bunch of people in online echo chambers venting and criticizing that in the end had no tangible changes on anything.

3) The fans hyped themselves because TPC decided it was a good idea to hype them. It's a choice. With the choice comes the backlash. In the end, it was a bad choice otherwise their video wouldn't have become the most disliked pokemon and Nintendo video on youtube. Fact. If the past means something, they should have learned from when they announced the first switch title, and then they released let's go games. If you hype pokemon fans, they will have expectations. Simple as it is. Just don't always blame the fans for the marketing issues of a big company. If you make a trailer saying "explore the ultramegalopolis" and then the ultramegalopolis is a corridor, you cannot blame the angry fans. It's always the same old story: pokemon fans cannot have expectations, cannot be hyped, cannot have good graphics, etc because it's pokemon. Pokemon fans hype themselves easily, as a big company, they should have known/learned at this point how to manage them, if they don't --> they don't know their fans. They are the biggest franchise on the planet and the fact that in the last 3 years they kept messing up with marketing is just another fact.

TPCi only hyped up that it would be an announcement of a new project. That does not mean a new mainline game whatsoever and it is entirely on the fans for making that jump in logic. Time and time again the TPCi gives fans an inch and they take 10 miles in speculation. At some point, the fans need to stop overhyping every damn announcement and should try to temper their expectations. TPCi has not been screwing up their marketing because all their so-called "failures" have seen immense success financially because they succeeded with the people they wanted it to succeed with children. They know their fans very well. It is not us. To keep acting like that our wants should be kowtowed to and treated as equivalent to their primary demographic despite not bringing in the same amount of profit is hilariously foolish. The children of today are very satisfied with the product they are receiving and the numbers show it. While we may want more from the series we have to be reasonable and acknowledge that what we want may not be what children want and that it may not align with what TPCi and Gamefreak want to produce. The reason they are one of the biggest franchises on the planet is that they know exactly what they are doing and know where their attention should be pointed to. Pokemon fans online need to understand that what we want isn't a priority like it was 10-20 years ago. I've made my peace with it and I pick and choose what interests me and ignore what doesn't. Not throw an online bitchfit because I'm not catered to 24/7. I'm 21 my time was 10 years ago not now and that's perfectly fine. Pokemon Unite isn't what I wanted to see but I'm not gonna walk around and act as TPCi owes me a mainline game just because I'm a fan.

4) The fact that Tencent forced them to make their own presentation is probably true. It was TPC who announced it as a "big project" to the fans. "Next week we will announce a big mobile project" ---> revolution avoided if you know your fans and you know what to say to your fans clearly.
They know damn well what Pokemon fans like and want --> I disagree. What you are not counting is that Pokemon is slowly becoming a controversial and divisive brand on the Internet. From USUM till UNITE, every day there's someone new who is upset about something. If you are a big Company you know this is not good for the brand, it's like a snowball that becomes an avalanche. And pay attention, I'm not talking about the games and their quality which would need an entire deep analysis, what I'm saying is that they are forgetting how to talk to their fans. Pokemon fans may not care about Unite, maybe someone will. The problem here is that this game, alone, could have had a totally different destiny than the one it got because, in the end, it makes sense financially.
Two videos in a year with 90k dislikes or more (Unite has 150k+ right now, or 200k if we consider the 50k thousands that misteriously disappeared)---> you are not comunicating the right way your products.


TPCi is going to announce it as a big project because to them it probably is a big project. A full-fledged game that has connectivity between the Switch and Mobile devices is still relatively new territory. MOBAs are most certainly new territory for them and would definitely be considered a big project considering that Pokemon has never made such a huge jump in genres. Plus it's a collaboration with Tencent which is absolutely huge for any gaming company worth their salt. For all intents and purposes, this is a massively new direction that the franchise is taking, So yes I think it does constitute as a big project. Pokemon is communicating with their fans very well and their recent successes clearly paint that picture. Pokemon is becoming controversial in some gaming circles but to the overwhelming majority of people in this world, Pokemon is a brand that is still going strong. It's still a family-friendly brand that caters to their children and no amount of rage from 20+-year-olds is going to change that because once again. WE ARE NOT THEIR PRIORITY!! They aren't forgetting how to talk to their fans. They are talking to their younger fans just as they always have and will continue to do. So long as children serve to be the lifeblood of this franchise then TPCi will never have to change their approach. Why would they? It has seen them so much success across the decades. If it isn't broken don't fix it. Youtube dislikes are but one metric to gauge fan responses. TPCi probably has a multi-million dollar marketing and public relations teams that have far more information than you or I and probably know way better about how well they will do. Whatever fan backlash we see online is literally a drop in the ocean compared to the wide array of people that make up the fanbase worldwide.
 
TBH, if they announced Dexit and said DLC will add more Pokemon, that would have given them flak as well, cuz then people are gonna say: They only have dexit to let us pay for the remaining Pokemon.
Many, many people said that they’d be fine if the Pokémon were patched in later. Half the backlash was that Masuda said there was no plan to add in the Pokémon, and it was a long term policy (which ended up being a flat out lie since they were developing IoA at the time).
The entire outrage was because GameFreak said they won’t add in the other Pokémon.
Please don’t misrepresent a group of people you don’t know the opinions of for the purposes of bring inflammatory.

Your facts aren’t correct as well since there’s a free patch to get the Pokémon.
 
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Their general audience is everyone their primary audience is children first and foremost. Everything they produce is first and foremost geared towards children. You cannot tell me that their emphases aren't on children, For christ's sake, they made an entire mobile game dedicated to getting kids to brush their teeth. TPCi knows who buys their games, toys, apps, DVDs, etc. and it's children. They are their bread and butter and they'll cater to them first and foremost. Do they like the fact that the older fans are still dedicated and that they are also interested? Of course, they do. They'll throw bones to the older fans to thank them for their loyalty but older fans are in no way their priority and it'd be foolish to assume that we are their target demographic.



The interview with InsideGamer that you a referring to makes no mention of DLC whatsoever. Masuda says the following: “We currently have no plans to make the Pokemon that are missing from the Galar Pokedex available in-game. This is an approach that we want to continue within future Pokemon games. Up until now, it hasn’t been possible to encounter every Pokemon in every game, so people had to transfer them from old games to the new game, by using Pokemon Bank for example.”

Now it's understandable to extrapolate from that statement to mean that they had no plans about DLC but now knowing what we know the reason he said he what he said was to advertise Pokemon Home, maintain a surprise factor about the expansion pass, and not to give a false hope that EVERY single Pokemon would be returning. Also, the term revolution is definitely dramatic. Online outrage in the grand scheme of things meant absolutely nothing and Sword and Shield are already in the Top 3 of best selling mainline games in less than a year of being on the market on a console with a lower install base than the DS and the 3DS. There was hardly a "revolution" it was just a bunch of people in online echo chambers venting and criticizing that in the end had no tangible changes on anything.



TPCi only hyped up that it would be an announcement of a new project. That does not mean a new mainline game whatsoever and it is entirely on the fans for making that jump in logic. Time and time again the TPCi gives fans an inch and they take 10 miles in speculation. At some point, the fans need to stop overhyping every damn announcement and should try to temper their expectations. TPCi has not been screwing up their marketing because all their so-called "failures" have seen immense success financially because they succeeded with the people they wanted it to succeed with children. They know their fans very well. It is not us. To keep acting like that our wants should be kowtowed to and treated as equivalent to their primary demographic despite not bringing in the same amount of profit is hilariously foolish. The children of today are very satisfied with the product they are receiving and the numbers show it. While we may want more from the series we have to be reasonable and acknowledge that what we want may not be what children want and that it may not align with what TPCi and Gamefreak want to produce. The reason they are one of the biggest franchises on the planet is that they know exactly what they are doing and know where their attention should be pointed to. Pokemon fans online need to understand that what we want isn't a priority like it was 10-20 years ago. I've made my peace with it and I pick and choose what interests me and ignore what doesn't. Not throw an online bitchfit because I'm not catered to 24/7. I'm 21 my time was 10 years ago not now and that's perfectly fine. Pokemon Unite isn't what I wanted to see but I'm not gonna walk around and act as TPCi owes me a mainline game just because I'm a fan.




TPCi is going to announce it as a big project because to them it probably is a big project. A full-fledged game that has connectivity between the Switch and Mobile devices is still relatively new territory. MOBAs are most certainly new territory for them and would definitely be considered a big project considering that Pokemon has never made such a huge jump in genres. Plus it's a collaboration with Tencent which is absolutely huge for any gaming company worth their salt. For all intents and purposes, this is a massively new direction that the franchise is taking, So yes I think it does constitute as a big project. Pokemon is communicating with their fans very well and their recent successes clearly paint that picture. Pokemon is becoming controversial in some gaming circles but to the overwhelming majority of people in this world, Pokemon is a brand that is still going strong. It's still a family-friendly brand that caters to their children and no amount of rage from 20+-year-olds is going to change that because once again. WE ARE NOT THEIR PRIORITY!! They aren't forgetting how to talk to their fans. They are talking to their younger fans just as they always have and will continue to do. So long as children serve to be the lifeblood of this franchise then TPCi will never have to change their approach. Why would they? It has seen them so much success across the decades. If it isn't broken don't fix it. Youtube dislikes are but one metric to gauge fan responses. TPCi probably has a multi-million dollar marketing and public relations teams that have far more information than you or I and probably know way better about how well they will do. Whatever fan backlash we see online is literally a drop in the ocean compared to the wide array of people that make up the fanbase worldwide.
1) Pokemon Smile is entirely adressed to children, that's a different scenario. Pokemon games are made for everyone and not mainly children. Why would they make the Champion have Charizard in SW/Sh and why would they give forms and gmax to basically the entire pokedex of gen 1 if they thought their audience was mainly children? Remember that there are children out there, who played Sw/Sh that don't know that pokemon like Beedrill exist because Sw/Sh was their first pokemon game. The DLCs have legendary birds forms, new Regis, old Regis. Tell me the addition of all these pokemon is mainly addressed to children (who don't even know them). Game Freak is not ignoring their older fans, they just think what older fans want is to see GEN1 in every single frame of their games. In a poster in Gen 8 there's a picture of Gengar, Machamp and Charizard, saying those are the most famous pokemon in Galar. Let's just not pretend that Game Freak isn't always trying to appeal the genwunners.
2) "the reason he said he what he said was to advertise Pokemon Home, maintain a surprise factor about the expansion pass, and not to give a false hope that EVERY single Pokemon" The reasons don't matter. Read what you quoted. They preferred to lie. Fact. They choosed revolution (yeah, revolution, because I would like to remember you all the threats Masuda received in the last months).
3) Again, no. Pokemon fans hype easly. If they fail to understand their audience because they don't know them, it's their problem. They are trying to sell products to this audience not to good people who fights to save whales. If they don't understand/know their audience is their problem and not the fans'. When you are the biggest franchise on earth you have to know how to talk to people who buy your products. They failed on this aspect plenty of times now (I would like to honorably mention the announcement of Let's go as main line games, the dexit, Unite). The way this product was presented to the audience is a mistake.
4) Again and again. What is a big project to them is irrilevant. We are talking about marketing. If you advertise something in a wrong way or to the wrong audience, you simply are not good at marketing. This may be a big project to them but it's not what the fans consider a big project. You and me can talk till next month but there are facts, my friend, the speak for us:

200k dislikes.


BTW: Please, stop talking about children as if they are all a bunch of brain-damaged. Among those thousands of dislikes there are thousands of children too. Let's just not pretend that children don't know what they like or cannot distinguish a good product from a mediocre product. Nowdays, children play videogames 10 times more than what we did. They know what a good videogame is better than we do.
 
I do not wish to go into long winded paragraphs but I'd like to add these two points:
1. Regarding the children-audience thing, GameFreak know and cater to the people who grew up with Gen Their explicit target audience for LGPE was for parents to play along with their children.
2. they could've said that the Pokémon will be patched in later for free without revealing anything about the DLC. They explicitly chose to inflame the fanbase. I don’t know what the SwSh marketing team was smoking before they asked Masuda to give that statement.
 
*aggressively motions to the gen 1 pandering everyone complains about*

THEY AINT DOIN THIS FOR THE KIDS.

They be doin' it to reel back in the ones what went away before the newer games came out. Y'ar.

I don't know why I'm a pirate right now. I need more sleep.

But then there's that app for motivating little children to brush their teeth that was announced in the first presentation, and yet even though it's targeted toward little children, it still was advertised with exclusively Gen I Pokemon.

When you get down to something like that, it's beyond mere pandering. They're using only those Pokemon even in apps designed solely for an incredibly young audience. They're pretty much saying to those children "These are the Pokemon that matter more than the rest", and that gets at me more than any of the Gen I pandering I've ever seen before.
 
Not only kids are their audience. That argument gets old.

I bet they still cash a lot because of older fans (speaking about game-sales, that is).
I have this dream that will never come true.
A "side main line", 12+, that doesn't focus on new pokemon, new region, new moves but instead presents a new way to explore what we already know. A new plot, I don't know, in Hoenn where you start with a level 50 pokemon and you have to do something else than the old same stuff. Where the battles are actually scaled to your level, where you can use your pokemon to do something for the exploration, like using an ice pokemon to freeze the water for whatever reason. I'm honestly tired of playing a pokemon game in a new cool region with great pokemon designs and moves, a new unuseful mechanic and knowing that there will be basically nothing else that will feel polished.
We have 900 pokemon, hundreds of moves, plenty of mechanics and yet in a wonderful region I can "fly" with a fixed 2 seconds cutscene instead of using my own Corviknight. I'm really at the point where I could leave 700 pokemon (which would definitively include all the first 151) out of the game, and clearly delete Charizard from existence, if that would allow me to have a real exploration of a pokemon region, a better level design and maybe, I don't know, a post game (something that nowdays has a 1% ratio of appearing in a pokemon game).
 
I bet they still cash a lot because of older fans (speaking about game-sales, that is).
I don't know exact rates but the amount has apparently been going up since HG/SS:

Back in 2017 Nintendo also reported that Sun/Moon had a higher percent of 20 and 30 year olds then previous 3DS Pokémon.
I don't have final data on XY, though apparently in Japan it's initial sales were mostly college aged, though that's apparently because younger children were sitting exams.
Supposedly in Japan kids were more likely to go with Yokai Watch instead, at least a few years ago.
In any case, Pokémon is just "family" enough as opposed to specifically kid targeted that it's fan base is apparently aging to some extent.

Edit:
1. Regarding the children-audience thing, GameFreak know and cater to the people who grew up with Gen Their explicit target audience for LGPE was for parents to play along with their children.
I believe something similar was said about the new anime series as well.
 
I don't know exact rates but the amount has apparently been going up since HG/SS:

Back in 2017 Nintendo also reported that Sun/Moon had a higher percent of 20 and 30 year olds then previous 3DS Pokémon.
I don't have final data on XY, though apparently in Japan it's initial sales were mostly college aged, though that's apparently because younger children were sitting exams.
Supposedly in Japan kids were more likely to go with Yokai Watch instead, at least a few years ago.
In any case, Pokémon is just "family" enough as opposed to specifically kid targeted that it's fan base is apparently aging to some extent.

Edit:

I believe something similar was said about the new anime series as well.
Yeah, the age demographic surely shifted for the games. I see more older players playing Sword/Shield in my country than children. Younger kids are much more likely to play Fortnite, Call of Duty or GTA nowadays.
 
Yeah, the age demographic surely shifted for the games. I see more older players playing Sword/Shield in my country than children. Younger kids are much more likely to play Fortnite, Call of Duty or GTA nowadays.
Kids play GTA, Call of Duty but in Sword and Shield Hop stops you every 3 steps telling you where to go. I think it's difficult to object the fact that Game Freak has a completely distorted image of today kids.
 
Kids play GTA, Call of Duty but in Sword and Shield Hop stops you every 3 steps telling you where to go. I think it's diffucult to object the fact that Game Freak has a completely distorted image of today kids.
I wholeheartedly agree. The option for a tutorial of some sort could be there, but Pokémon is still a perfect trial-and-error game. It's not hard to figure it out.

The game is a faceroll, really. There are some exceptions, but those are far from the rule.
 
So my country banned 59 Chinese apps yesterday. PUBG was notably excluded though for some reason. I wonder if we're in for for PUBG and possibly Pokémon Unite ban if it turns into a popular sensation like Pokémon Go. India accounted for the third highest amount of downloads for Pokémon Go right after US and Mexico so it’s a pretty important market, specially since the main source of gaming is mobile phones and not consoles.

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Tbh I am not even sure I will be able to play this game in my country. Do they even listen to their own fans, even Japanese ones dont like it.
 
They were late to release Pokémon Go in India, but it grew as one of their largest markets. They initially didn’t release the game and later did when they could partner with one of our internet providers for the Sponsored PokeStops. I’m guessing the game might escape ban (if it even releases) due to the technicality of not being just Chinese (or the government just not caring about Pokemon) but I doubt it’d take off like Pokémon Go did...

Even if that somehow happened someone would figure out the chinese connection, make it into a meme and bring the reviews to one star (that’s what happened to TikTok in India).
 
I don't think it matters that much if Pokemon Unite is banned in some countries. The game, imo, is mainly addressed to a Chinese audience. This doesn't mean that when they decided to make it they didn't plan to release the game everywhere, hoping that it would be a success globally. But in the end, I think their main goal is to attract China, which is a maket extremely difficult to reach for Pokemon and Nintendo.
 
I don't think it matters that much if Pokemon Unite is banned in some countries. The game, imo, is mainly addressed to a Chinese audience. This doesn't mean that when they decided to make it they didn't plan to release the game everywhere, hoping that it would be a success globally. But in the end, I think their main goal is to attract China, which is a maket extremely difficult to reach for Pokemon and Nintendo.
And tbh I don know if they will reach them
 
I really hope the roster for Unite is much larger, or more diverse generation wise, at launch than what is currently shown. I'm pretty meh on most of the Pokemon, even the two that I would most likely use, Talonflame and Blastoise. I'm wishing that we'll see some lesser known Pokemon get a chance to shine, but given that the current roster is basically fan service ahoy, I doubt it we'll see more than one or two less popular 'mons.

I too hope to see Your mascot there.
Its a LoL and shooter game in one.
Generaly this game would deserve new editions in future together with Pokken.

Now we need only a pokemon racing game: water, ground, air

iif they give immunities and type advantage in future it will be great
 
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