Pokemon Sword/Pokemon Shield

Hmm. I think it depends in all honesty

Investors expect exponential growth. The game this year has gotta sell more units than the game last year, even if a game sells well by typical metrics (selling way into the millions for Pokemon titles), if a game under-performs sales wise, it can cause investors to get antsy. Similarly the game can sell well but a critically panned game is a bad look for the company

If the game under-performs critically and financially for a Pokemon, it could be a look in. It depends on if that happens though.

It would also effect Go players as well, though maybe they'd be more charitable because of LGPE.

Edited by PippingFool on Jun 13th 2019 at 2:12:06 AM

I mean, there hasn't been a backlash anywhere near like this since Ruby/Sapphire cut off compatibility with gen 2. And I don't think Pokemon ever truly recovered from that necessity aside from Go. These will sell millions, but it's not impossible for the sales to suffer.

Man r/pokemon and discord server for pokemon to lesser extent are still at war.

Tbh, I'm starting to get over it. I feel this ass licking doesn't justify the can of worms GameFreak opened up and potential problems in the future. On the other hand, the people complaining bash on people that genuinely looking forward to the game regardless of the problem. I'm getting sick of this drama already.

What Game Freak needs to do is announce a long-term plan. Announce in advance of Sword and Shield's release whether they plan to reintroduce older Pokemon to Gen 8 (whether through patches or an Updated Re-release or two), what their broad plans are for future games' rosters (temporary vs. permanent retirement of Pokemon, if they will make it a goal to work back up to the full dex or not), and in what way Pokemon Home will allow Pokemon to retain their value while they're in retirement.

They've already kinda said limited rosters will be a thing.

I think we have our answer and just have to deal with it.

I admit, despite complaining, I'm somewhat torn.

Since I'm only just getting back into things, I'm kinda irked that any pokes I catch in older games might not be transferable...but at the same time I wasn't really planning to use old teams anyway all that much. It was still a thing I was going to consider though.

Mostly, I was gonna breed in older games, then move the new mons to the latest game for a exp boost, along with any new moves they might be able to learn.

I'm also sad Megas and Z-Moves are gone, as I'd wanted to see how they play off against Dynamaxing.

I guess we'll all just have to deal with it. Brand new world after all.

I think even if they want to retract the statement, unless they want to delay it, they already went past V1, so now they're committed

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 12th 2019 at 10:25:04 AM

That question is better suited for the Pokemon General thread.

Whoops, thought i was in the General thread

I can't deny that I did expect the point of "too many Pokémon to have in one game" would eventually arrive. I did expect it to come sometime next generation, or maybe gen X, but specific timing is a tricky thing. I'm more bothered because all of the excuses we've been giving sound like they're either cheap, incompetent, or both. Between the dummied out animations in SM, the whole thing with XY, the recent announcement of Home, the dissonance between the explanations of "this is a creative choice" and "we just didn't have the time", and all the other little problems, this doesn't feel like the moment we have to deal with having too many Pokémon, it feels like they're trying to cut some major corners for no reason.

Not to mention, there are more respectable and elegant ways to deal with the existence of too many Pokémon than this. They didn't make a proper explanation, they threw this fact as a tiny disclaimer at the end of a less important and mostly unrelated series of announcements, soon after two big announcements for the game and the franchise. It smells weird, is what this choice does.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jun 13th 2019 at 5:40:14 AM

[randomly wonders if the Sowrd/Shield thing will lead to a sword-fighting Pokemon spinoff]

We have that, it's called Super Smash Bros.

In other news, for what it's worth, the like/dislike ratio on the Treehouse Live segment for Sw Sh is a bit over 1:3

Edited by jdeo1997 on Jun 13th 2019 at 6:15:30 AM

That's a Fire Emblem spin-off.

Well, at long last Game Freak is hit with a PR shitstorm due to their suboptimal approach to game design. Or, in other words, HIRE MORE PEOPLE TO AVOID SHIT HAPPENING.

That's a Fire Emblem spin-off.

What are you talking about, it's at least a Pokemon/Fire Emblem Crossover. I mean alongside the Pokeball Pokemon, it's got everyone's favorites like Pikachu, Jiglypuff, Mewtwo, Pichu, Red and Leaf with the Kanto starters, Lucario, Greninja, Incineroar, And Ridley

Edited by jdeo1997 on Jun 13th 2019 at 6:42:59 AM

Why are people acting like the inability to transfer Pokemon to Ruby and Sapphire hurt sales in any way whatsoever? Ruby and Sapphire sold less because they came after the fad had died down. This started as early as gen 2. Gold and Silver, while impressive, still sold notably less than the gen 1 games, and Crystal sold similarly to Emerald. Just look at the box office numbers for the first four movies. We went from one of the highest grossing movies ever to not even being released in theaters outside Japan, and that was all in the span of gen 1 and 2. Also, the GBA was just a less popular system than the original Game Boy and the GBC. Hell, Ruby and Sapphire are to date the only Pokemon games to be the highest selling games on their console system.

Edited by Druplesnubb on Jun 13th 2019 at 12:45:43 PM

Suddenly, I am now glad that I broke ranks with the series starting with Generation 5, and not just for what one can argue is a Single-Issue Wonk. Not allowing the transfer of old Pokemon that aren't in the Galar Pokedex is a special kind of evil that Cyril Sneer in his early appearances would do if it ensured that he would make a ton of cash from it and Game Freak, to me, is already going down the path of scummy game developers who are jumping on the live-service bandwagon before it gets possibly derailed by government regulation. EA, Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and Ubisoft are all guilty of pushing microtransactions into their games already, and considering that they're in Pokemon GO, I have a bad feeling that Game Freak is going to join in.

Feels like no matter how excellent the game is, it will forever be Overshadowed by Controversy.

I will still take a wait and see approach as I plan to but more on the fence.

Edited by lastfight5 on Jun 13th 2019 at 10:22:56 PM

Copy pasts from elsewhere: https://www.famitsu.com/news/201906/13177936.html

• Increasing available Pokemon in one title is not their master plan.
• Pokemon Home is the Home.
• Masuda is not happy with the decision. "In the end, I had no choice but to choose the quality."
• They considered doing this for Sun/Moon.
• Counting forms, the current total in SWSH is more than 1000 Pokémon.
• Even if a Pokémon can't be imported to SWSH, you will be able to play with it in Pokémon Home in some way.
• They are considering using the models/animations they have created for SWSH in future entries but nothing is guaranteed as that will depend on new mechanics like Dynamax/Megas, that require additional work for every Pokémon.

So, it looks like Dynamaxing is the culprit here.

Well, there you have it.

Alright, so I'm pretty sure that unless the likes of Unown and the Burmy line are in the game, we're looking at the most robust default Pokedex of the series.

Hm? Didn't they say that megas might go?

While I'm very happy the Pokedex seems to be mostly there, 1000+ including forms seems close enough that taking out a few makes less sense.

Unless that's counting Unown, 6 Burmy's and stuff like that.

If they’re making cuts, 1000 sounds like too much for what they can have in the game. Are you sure they don’t mean, like, Pokémon in existence?

I assume that's the amount of Pokemon that would exist in total, and not the amount that would be in the game. Because otherwise this whole mess would seem pretty darn overblown.

Considering that there is currently 809 different mons (excluding forms), that would mean that Sword/Shield would introduce about 200 new pokemon. That's respectable.