Pokémon General Thread

I wonder why people insist Mimikyu is a Pika-clone when Togedemaru exist.

Because its a literal pikachu mimic. Its not a pikaclone by our normal defenition, but its an honorary member for the concept alone.

15 minute Sword/Shield Direct; June 5th at 6 am PDT.^note 2 pm CEST; 10 pm JST

"New business strategy" presentation (not a Direct) announced for May 29th at 10 am JST.^note 2 am CEST; 6 pm PDT, May 28th

Stream for Direct.

Edited by tclittle on May 27th 2019 at 9:35:15 AM

"Business Strategy Presentation"

My guess is that we're going to get an announcement that the core games will follow the lead of Star Wars and cool its heels for a while, in favor of Spinoffs like Detective Pikachu.

After all, as discussed on the prior page, GF needs to replenish its batteries.

This would not be to say that we wouldn't get Sinnoh Remakes by 2021, but rather that Gen 8 will likely parallel Gen 6 with only the 2 original versions of the region followed by prior gen remakes and then on to Gen 9.

They're probably just going to double down on mobile games and the main series going forward. No more console spinoffs since they've never been hugely successful.

I hope not, I need a new mystery dungeon game.

I can actually see them not making mystery dungeon games for awhile. For as good as the games are, they've always been rated poorly. Don't get me wrong, the games aren't perfect, but they don't do extremely well either. So it's a gamble at this point. However I do think they are going to just double down on mobile games now as it was stated it be a focus for them. I think we can blame the success of PGO on that.

I wonder if they'll announce a Switch port of Detective Pikachu.

Pokémon has an issue with discarding spinoffs after a generation or two. I wouldn't mind a new Pokémon Pinball alongside a new Mystery Dungeon.

The Switch is a handheld-esque console so I don't see why they wouldn't put spinoffs on it. Dumping all the spinoffs on mobile is a bad people. Some people don't have mobiles and many more don't game on their's.

Edited by Pichu-kun on May 27th 2019 at 1:08:54 AM

Cheaper to make, greater potential for returns with microtransactions, you can push one out fast and update it constantly much easier than a console game, etc

Other than making fans happy they have no reason to keep making video game console spinoffs, which have been pretty modest successes at best. Go did so well they made a mainline game styled after it, and I think that's pretty indicative of what they're about when it comes to producing games in this franchise.

Edited by Hashil on May 27th 2019 at 5:10:12 AM

The problem is that the spin-offs generally suck or aren't interesting, on mobile or console. They won't make much money with bad games no matter the platform.

Say that to GO.

Fine.

<To Pokémon GO>

You suck and are uninteresting.

It's true, Pokemon Go sucks and is uninteresting.

Don't bring reality into my dumb joke PMC.

There will be no forgiveness.

HandsomeRob sucks and is uninteresting.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 27th 2019 at 4:43:53 AM

No forgiveness.

Go is interesting at the very least, thus the end result. And it should be pretty good by now.

I mean people love Mystery Dungeon (Or at least English speaking fans love the first few from what I've seen. Haven't heard good things about the more recent ones.) so there's clearly a market for it. Ranger less so but I've heard some decent things about it.

Now, they need to see what they can do with the Switch.

It's not as if the spin-off games do badly. Most of them seem to hit over a million copies sold, and some more than that. The first couple Mystery Dungeon games seem to have each sold around 5 million. And it's not like any of these games are AAA quality, I'm sure they made their budgets back several times over.

It's just that mobile games are not only cheaper to make most of the time, but microtransactions have a much higher ceiling on the amount of money they can get from consumers, over a longer period of time for less effort.

Their spinoffs also keep seeing diminishing returns over time because they're all about as unambitious as the main games.

I'm sure the mobile games will suffer the same problem, but as said one's a much safer investment with greater potential for returns than the other.

I've seen Jim Sterling slam the AAA game industry for having a love affair with microtransactions and well, if Game Freak and the Pokemon Company decide to embrace them I would say screw them and never look back. Seriously, I utterly despise microtransactions and hate seeing them encroach upon stuff. Payday 2 used to have them, but the developer got the rights back and removed the microtransactions in an update.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on May 27th 2019 at 6:10:20 AM

They already have.

De Na are releasing a Pokemon mobile game next year that will almost certainly feature them, Pokemon Duel has them, they just put one out last week with them, and Pokemon Go had them from the start.

Well then, it seems that I have to live up to what I've said...

Only I'm not going to do it here because it would probably warrant a ban or worse...

So does Pokémon Conquest just not exist? Or Pokkén Tournament, which admittedly was a somewhat clumsy attempt at what it did but was still a strong showing for the franchise’s creativity?