Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield (2019, Switch)

[Ronnie]

 

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Welcome to how many of us on here and elsewhere have felt for a LONG time. The franchise has been stale for ages now but every time it got brought up there was always some excuse for it. People defended the IP and GF purely because of the love of the franchise and the years they had spent with it. Fast forward to now and the fan base is finally admitting what many have been saying for years.The franchise has been given a pass for a long time purely because of what it is. 

GF have never really had to mix up the formula because the thing sells by the bucket loads. It will be interesting to see how well this one does. Will those kicking off about the changes actually put their money where their mouth is and not buy the game? Probably not. We seen this scenario with the Let's Go games where fans were adamant that they were going to buy it or play it but surprise surprise many of them did. Until the sales start to dwindle ( they are never going to fall off a cliff because of the cross media promotion that the franchise has ) then GF are pretty much free to do what they want with it, for better or worse.

 

The same button puzzle gym mechanics. I mean come on.

Great post @Julius

Edited June 14, 2019 by Ronnie

[Sofiz]

@Glen-i is right, guys. You just can't admit it.

[Aperson]

This is the way I see it.

 

While Pokemon is the most valuable media franchise in the world... there are a lot of different companies that the profit is divided between. With the games alone we have four different companies involved in the creation, Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak and the Pokemon Company itself. The profits from the sale of each game would theoretically be divided between the four companies. Here's where we go into unknown territory. we don't know the profit split between the four companies.

 

Three of these companies are only really involved in Pokemon or, in Game Freak's case, do not make the same kind of money they do from anything that isn't Pokemon. Nintendo has several IP that they can rely on to help drive sales... but who is the company that's actually acting as the publisher? I believe that would be the Pokemon Company.

 

So, you have a company named after a franchise designed to be based around brand management. They have been responsible for the advertising of the franchise on all fronts and have been responsible for making sure everything aligned properly. All other products are designed to be adverts to sell the games. So, what if the Pokemon Company is taking the majority of the profit from the sales of the game? That would imply that Game Freak doesn't actually make as much money from the sales of the games as we would think.

 

We also know from the games that Game Freak's office is kind of small. They are literally on a single floor in a building in Japan and if you've played Sun/Moon the Game Freak office there is modelled exactly as it was in real life. Getting a bigger headquarters might allow them more room to be able to hire more employees but it's not likely something they have the time for or even necessarily actively seeking. From interviews with Game Freak they seem to like being a small company as everyone knows everyone and gets along with each other (possibly not too much of an issue given Japanese culture demands a strong level of respect between everyone but still)

 

They could ask for more funds and resources from the Pokemon Company to help but with the Pokemon Company involved in many different projects at once and still trying to keep making profits themselves, perhaps the amount of money they are willing to spend on each project is limited.

 

OK, all of the above is probably a load of tosh but it does seem like the move to the Switch could be a key moment in the series' history as everyone's expectations have been raised by the game being on a console far more powerful. It is sharing a platform with games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and is one of the best selling franchises in the history of video games so should theoretically have enough money to produce a high quality title, but every time we see this game or it's shown off there always seems to be a few concessions of sorts like "you can control the camera, but only in this area (that may not actually be true but the implication so far is that camera control is wild area only)" or "you can only transfer Pokemon if they are in the Galar Pokedex" and I think this is a direct result of having multiple companies take shares of the profit. The grey area is that we don't know how much each company makes but if Game Freak really aren't coming out of the games as well off as we might think it may explain why they are having to make concessions like this. Or, they are simply too stubborn to ask for help. Possibly everything.

[Sofiz]

25 minutes ago, GenericAperson said:

We also know from the games that Game Freak's office is kind of small. They are literally on a single floor in a building in Japan and if you've played Sun/Moon the Game Freak office there is modelled exactly as it was in real life. Getting a bigger headquarters might allow them more room to be able to hire more employees but it's not likely something they have the time for or even necessarily actively seeking. From interviews with Game Freak they seem to like being a small company as everyone knows everyone and gets along with each other (possibly not too much of an issue given Japanese culture demands a strong level of respect between everyone but still)

You raise good points, but I don't think all the programmers necessarily need to all be based at the headquarters. The way I imagine it being, is that the HQ is just a head office based in the capital, with a majority of work taking place in a different office that might be larger or better equipped, and most likely waaaay cheaper if it's outside of Tokyo; for example, I don't work in my employer's head office, I work in a separate office which is huge and has the facilities for a high volume of workers, and the head office is just for all the upper management and based in the capital. I have not done a single bit of research into this, I'm just guessing as this is a fairly common (and smart) business model. But if they wanted to allocate more money to development, they could easily get this separate area if it doesn't exist already. They probably should do that....

[Julius]

Live scenes from Game Freak as they decide which Pokémon won't be in the Galar Dex:

[Emerald Emblem]

To be fair, when it comes to visuals, we have to remember that the game comes out in 5 months time, I'm sure if they pulled resources from their new game for the final push in tidying the visuals up, it will look much better by release. What they showed at E3 is by no means the finished product.

[Sméagol]

I didn't want to discuss it further, but this article (and several others before it) popped up. I'm simply right.

https://www.siliconera.com/2019/06/16/game-freak-says-it-will-be-hard-for-all-pokemon-to-appear-even-in-games-after-pokemon-sword-shield/

Look, it's not entirely your fault, GameFreak created this expectancy by introducing backwards compatibility for all previous games in the first place. It's easy for me to say now, in hindsight, and as someone who's not a hardcore fan, but in my opinion they created this problem themselves, and should never have introduced backwards compatibility in silver & gold in the first place, so fans wouldn't expect this for future games. At the very least they should have stopped adding this feature with the transition to 3D. Like I said, personally I don't see the point of the ability to transfer all your Pokémon to a future game anyway. Don't you want to play a new game? Or just stomp on everything with your old team of all level 100 Pokémon? And for competitive play you can just play the old game if you really want to play with a team from a certain generation? For collection purposes there should simply be a global Pokédex. But anyway, regardless of my opinion.. This is just reality. 1000+ Pokémon are unmanageble. This will only get worse for future games, so hardcore fans simply need to let go of being able to transfer all your Pokémon. It's simply unrealistic. If you want all Pokémon, you'd be waiting at least an extra year for Sword and Shield, perhaps even more, and this is only going to increase development time for future games. It will also be a huge factor in limiting real progress, like updated visuals, a bigger and more detailed worlds and improved mechanics and balancing. Eventually, you want pokémon to look like how they do in Detective Pikachu right? Well guess what, there's no convert button for that. Complain all you want, this is just reality. The sooner you can let go, the sooner they can focus on real improvements.

In my opinion, they should drop the the ability to transfer Pokémon altogether.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Sméagol

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Sméagol said:

Like I said, personally I don't see the point of the ability to transfer all your Pokémon to a future game anyway. Don't you want to play a new game? Or just stomp on everything with your old team of all level 100 Pokémon? And for competitive play you can just play the old game if you really want to play with a team from a certain generation?

You misunderstand me here, I never use my Pokémon from previous games until I see those credits roll. And even then, I might wait until I've fought every trainer and such. In fact, I go out of my way to only use new Pokémon on my initial playthrough.

It kills the variety for competitive play though. Restrictions are cool when they're a temporary thing to mix online tourneys up now and again. But a blanket restriction forever just sucks.

Once a new Pokémon game comes out, Online tourneys pretty much end for the previous game. Which makes perfect sense. But it was never a big deal, because you could transfer your old Pokémon and implement some new Pokémon to switch up your strategy for the new metagame.

Game Freak have to start outsourcing if it's too much work, because being able to catch 'em all is half of the appeal. Or stop making games that are remakes. One of them. I'd happily take a delay of it meant I could use a Totodile if I felt like it.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Glen-i

[RedShell]

Don't you usually have to reach a certain point in the game before being able to transfer old Pokémon anyway? It's been a while since I've played Pokémon, but I seem to remember that being a thing.

Anyway, I think it's a shame that people won't be able to see/use some of their favourites in Sword & Shield. The idea of raising Pokémon that you can keep for the duration of your time playing the series, across multiple games and systems is really cool. But yeah, it's obviously a lot of work to keep something like that going with an ever increasing number of characters.

I reckon I'll pick up this game though, like I said it's been quite a long time since I played a Pokémon game, and Grookey is such an adorable starter that I feel this will be a good time to jump back in.

[Aneres11]

Didn't Black and White (the best in the series, might I add...) Only allow that regions Pokémon throughout the game?

I'm sure that happened but I can't remember that far back. 

I personally loved that. As it was like playing a brand new game and having to just try different moves to see if they were effective or not to understand a Pokemon's type. It has become a bit of a bore to know exactly what is effective against a wild / rival Pokémon due to how familiar you get with them. 

I also don't do online battling, so the competitive aspect doesn't bother me so much. 

This isn't me excusing GF, but I'm not really bothered. I also don't get the hate for the 8 gyms. I have always loved the gyms.

You only have to look at the pile of sh*t that Sun and Moon were to understand that it doesn't work when they try something new. Come at me. Just my opinion. 

[Sméagol]

Well, like I said. Regardless of my opinion, these are the facts. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can all move on. So I'll drop it after this post.

[Sofiz]

I don't see how they could put that many Pokémon on the 3DS of all things, but on Switch? Oh well that's asking too much, clearly. There's no excuse for this. I'd be more than happy to wait longer and have the game delayed so that it could be polished and done properly. 

[bob]

Just write it into the story that due to humans ruining the planet, there has been a mass Pokémon extinction with 70% of all species wiped out.

Then we're back down to 300ish Pokémon, they can cut all the chaff and ones that nobody likes, and no-one can complain because it's canon.

[Aperson]

I've got a better in-universe explanation for why we can't get all the Pokemon which I'm amazed nobody else has thought of.

 

https://twitter.com/GenericAperson/status/1140209391058247680

Edited June 17, 2019 by GenericAperson

[Sheikah]

Just write it into the story that due to humans ruining the planet, there has been a mass Pokémon extinction with 70% of all species wiped out.

Then we're back down to 300ish Pokémon, they can cut all the chaff and ones that nobody likes, and no-one can complain because it's canon.

Just delete everything but Gen 1 and a few select Gen 2. Then sit back while listening to We didn't start the fire.

[Mandalore]

It's a good opportunity to bring back Pokémon Stadium. A game almost exclusively focused on the battles, surely they'd be able to cram all 1000+ in that way?

[Ike]

Honestly though, is anyone really going to miss Stunfisk? Or Unfeasant? There so many other starter bird Pokemon who are vastly superior. They can drop Ultra Beasts while they're at it as well. Maybe the Pikachu knock-offs.

They've been looking for any old excuse to try and reduce the amount of new Pokemon every gen, seems they finally hit their limit.

4 hours ago, Sofiz said:

I don't see how they could put that many Pokémon on the 3DS of all things, but on Switch? Oh well that's asking too much, clearly. There's no excuse for this. I'd be more than happy to wait longer and have the game delayed so that it could be polished and done properly. 

I read on the internet that the games are tied in with the anime, TGC and merchandise so delaying the game also impacts those. They seem to be a restricted by their own success.

[Sofiz]

2 hours ago, Ike said:

I read on the internet that the games are tied in with the anime, TGC and merchandise so delaying the game also impacts those. They seem to be a restricted by their own success.

Fair enough, but then, why not give themselves enough time to finish the game? We can't keep making excuses for a company that can easily afford to make better games than they actually are. And they're still going to release it at a ludicrously high price and people will still buy it.

[Glen-i]

21 hours ago, RedShell said:

Don't you usually have to reach a certain point in the game before being able to transfer old Pokémon anyway? It's been a while since I've played Pokémon, but I seem to remember that being a thing.

Not anymore. Ever since Pokémon Bank was a thing.

19 hours ago, Aneres11 said:

Didn't Black and White (the best in the series, might I add...) Only allow that regions Pokémon throughout the game?

I'm sure that happened but I can't remember that far back. 

Yes, but the data for the other Pokémon was till in the game, so you can transfer them if you wanted.

15 hours ago, bob said:

Then we're back down to 300ish Pokémon, they can cut all the chaff and ones that nobody likes, and no-one can complain because it's canon.

 

14 hours ago, Sheikah said:

Just delete everything but Gen 1 and a few select Gen 2. Then sit back while listening to We didn't start the fire.

 

12 hours ago, Ike said:

Honestly though, is anyone really going to miss Stunfisk? Or Unfeasant? There so many other starter bird Pokemon who are vastly superior. They can drop Ultra Beasts while they're at it as well. Maybe the Pikachu knock-offs.

Wow... What a selfish point of view. Also completely wrong.

Every Pokémon has its fans. Even Stunfisk. I like Stunfisk. It has a dopey face.

BTW, one of those Pikachu knock-offs won a World Championship. So it's way better than Pikachu. Buzzwole (an Ultra Beast) is legit one of my favourite Pokémon from Sun/Moon. It's super hilarious!

[Ashley]

35 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

 Buzzwole (an Ultra Beast) is legit one of my favourite Pokémon from Sun/Moon. It's super hilarious!

It's one of @Daft's too, so there's at least two fans!

[bob]

Wow... What a selfish point of view. Also completely wrong.
Every Pokémon has its fans.

Not necessarily:

[drahkon]

Everyone talking about what Pokémon should be in a game and I'm just sitting here dreaming of this:

[Julius]

Read this on Reddit a few days ago, and while I think you can take some of the numbers with a pinch of salt, the points being made about Game Freak are important ones:  

Quote

The fundamental problem with Pokémon currently is the strained relationship between Nintendo and Game Freak. The Pokémon Company is sort of the overarching name for Pokémon in general, shared by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (who do side games).

In short, Pokémon makes a ton of money, but Pokémon games make less than you’d think. From 2013-2015 The Pokemon Company pulled in about $16 million selling games like Black and White 2 and X and Y. In 2016, when Pokemon GO came out, they made $144 million, almost 26 years worth of profit. Video game sales have made up only 19% of Pokemon's absurd total gross since 1996. Everything else goes through TPC and gets split three ways (as best we know).

Nintendo stands to make money on Pokemon in four ways: merchandise, game sales, console sales, and additional game sales via new console owners (you'll probably pick up a Nintendo game if you buy Switch mostly for Pokemon).

Game Freak stands to make money on Pokemon in two ways: merchandise, and game sales.

Nintendo mostly want Pokemon to sell merch and sell consoles, which is why there's always been a new Pokemon game to launch alongside new handhelds. The quality of the games themselves don't really matter too much to them.

Game Freak makes the games, but they’re a much smaller studio than the size of Pokémon would suggest. Nintendo and TPC can’t force Game Freak to get bigger, and don’t have any technical say in what they develop, just control over whether or not it gets to be called Pokemon. Nintendo have huge sway over Game Freak due to their sheer size and sole ownership of the trademark. If no more Pokémon games or merch were made during a legal battle, Nintendo would be fine and Game Freak would not.

This means Game Freak has huge pressure to keep making the game fit the new systems. Can't really help sell the 3DS if your game is 2D. Being pushed off the 2D ledge into 3D was a huge mistake for Game Freak, since they now had to stop all game design and throw bodies at making 721 high resolution 3D models (and that's just the Pokemon). It's clear looking through X and Y that they were bumping up against the technology more than their own incompetence. Black and White 2 had huge sprawling routes, completely new environments, and cool, complicated dungeons. X and Y put Mewtwo in a hallway. The game was clearly rushed, and while you can't say definitively, stuff like Mega Evolution has been a huge hit for merchandising, and there's been guesses that it was "suggested" down from on high. Both BW and XY didn't have too many marketable Pokemon (which is why Greninja got trotted out so often) and you could see why Nintendo might push for a guaranteed hit (Mega Charizard alone has probably made TPC $10 million).

Not to mention that every ten years Game Freak is asked to remake the games they've already made. FireRed and LeafGreen were remakes in order to have a Kanto game compatible with Gen 3's hard lock on transferring Pokemon. While you can tell that Game Freak enjoyed remaking Gold and Silver based on just how much love is put into that game, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire show what happen when a game studio already feeling pushed to the brink is asked to skip their third version of poorly-received games to remake one they've already made. Zero Battle Frontier, removed all of Emerald's improvements, more megas, etc.

It’s not said aloud, but there’s been more and more tension between GF and Nintendo. With Pokémon Go’s popularity, Nintendo can see the profitable future without being beholden to GFs artistic decisions, which is also why they’re now launching tons of Pokémon apps (Masters, Quest, Sleep). GF feels like they’re being pushed out, and are hoping they can launch another franchise that Nintendo doesn’t have a stake in. Since BW2, they’ve developed four games without Nintendo, stretching their already short staff thin. They famously ask “what non-Pokémon game would you make that would sell well?” to new applicants.

They can't try to hold Pokemon hostage by not making games anymore since Nintendo can make tons of money without them, and they can't make Pokemon games unless it's by Nintendo's decree.

Have you seen the trailer for their new game "Town"? Which game does it look like they're more excited about making?

Most of this was explained to me by someone working at TPC international when I worked with them, most of it is stuff you can look up yourself. Understanding who owns what and who stands to profit from each type of decision

 

1 hour ago, drahkon said:

Everyone talking about what Pokémon should be in a game and I'm just sitting here dreaming of this:

Heck yeah, I love myself some Pokémon mock-ups! This one gets me dreaming: 

14 hours ago, Ike said:

Honestly though, is anyone really going to miss Stunfisk? Or Unfeasant? There so many other starter bird Pokemon who are vastly superior. They can drop Ultra Beasts while they're at it as well. Maybe the Pikachu knock-offs.

14 hours ago, Ike said:

I read on the internet that the games are tied in with the anime, TGC and merchandise so delaying the game also impacts those. They seem to be a restricted by their own success.

Oh yeah, that's 100% the case. It's a huge feat of brand synergy that they're always able to line up their different products so well. 

But I think it's even more of a reason to either:

- give Game Freak more support in development

- bring Pokémon entirely in-house at Nintendo

- look to let a different developer take the reins for a change. 

I'm not envious of anyone working at Game Freak at all. Their team is far too small, they don't have the time or budget to show a shred of ambition, and they bare the brunt of any backlash when it comes to the largest IP in media — despite supposedly only owning a third of it, at best. 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Julius

[Agent Gibbs]

As selfish as this may be, i'm utterly indifferent to loosing pokemon for a few reasons;

• I didn't use 90% of them
• Some were cool looking but in reality unusable without specific teams
• at the start of recent games i planned what team i wanted and bred pokemon before hand to transfer as eggs, which made the usual choice between three starters an even larger choice

That said, losing Mega Evolutions is bad, Mega's solved glaring problems with some pokemon (Charizard being an actual Dragon, Gyardaos loosing Flying since it made no sense etc), so i'm very disappointed in that.

I suppose however my opinion may change further if pokemon i liked and used are omitted, like Tyrantrum a fossil pokemon i loved, i bet it will go. I typically gravitate towards Ghosts too and i bet we'll lose some of them. What about Eevee evolution? if even one goes that's stupid, Legendaries? whilst not a pokemon i'd keep in a team unless i was having a fun play through, its a shame to loose them (although i suppose makes them legendary)

Really they should just soft reboot now, redesign, retype some pokemon and just leave the past in the past. 

The thing that bothers me though its, whilst the game looks good, it does look more basic considering other games on switch, so with the sacrifice where the extra 'stuff' going, is the world going to be large? there obviously isn't a drive for all pokemon in game, hell even the wild area looked quite sparse on spawns.......I feel like because Pokemon Games sell no matter what, Game Freak either haven't got the talent to deal with a game like this now, or are being lazy because they know it will sell anyway - the previous news about Pokemon Home suggest its more of the latter and that the original plan is out the window to meet a deadline.

I think for the first time, i'm just gonna not buy this straight away

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Agent Gibbs
Spelling so Bob doesn't loose his mind

[Ronnie]

You can't please every fan all the time. If growing the game means leaving behind some Pokemon that the vast, vast majority don't care about then so be it, that's how things go. Those Pokemon aren't wiped out of existance, they still exist in all the previous games.

Am I sad they never kept Tatl from Majora's Mask or Linebeck from Phatom Hourglass in every subsequent Zelda game? Of course not, that would be stupid. Instead, those subsequent games give me brand new experiences each every time, not the exact same game repackaged time after time like Pokemon does, with the same simplistic button-puzzle gyms, the same buff/debuff animations and souds, the same statuesque copy and pasted NPCs patrolling routes ready to stop you if you walk past.

As the above data proves almost every Pokemon is someone's favourite but needs of the many, needs of the few etc. Good post from Reddit though, it's definitely a tough situation to be in.