Game Freak says it will be ‘difficult’ to include all Pokémon in future games

Balancing and graphical quality present obstacle, says producer.

[Immagaiden]

Gotta catch em all means GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

Fans have been looking forward to a Pokémon game with over 1000 creatures to collect. Don’t take this away from them

[RosweeSon]

Not only that they literally finishing apps to allow full BC across all the multiple gens 1-2 4-7 all on 3ds and with Pokemon bank it’s perfect but they obviously trying to rush it for a deadline.

[Zeref]

I think if it was such a challenge. They should just stop making so many new Pokémon. Limit it to mythical, legendary and starters. That's like maybe 10 new Pokémon per generation.

I don't think anybody wants 100+ new pokemon if it means that old ones aren't going to make the cut.

Besides I think we have enough pokemon now.

[thejigisup]

Way more than enough Pokemon, after gen 2 it was a wrap for me on trying to keep up with all the new ones. It doesn't help that it seems like a stretch to add more sometimes. Vanillite, rotom, luvdisc, trubbish, klink and more i mean a lot more of these newer pokemon feel uninspired and just cheap ways to throw in more. They don't even resemble the Pokemon of olde. We don't need all these things that just look like other things. Your right who wants another 100 when they can't even handle what they got.

[Snookies12]

I mean, they clearly have to add a bunch of new Pokemon to every new iteration. That's their easy way of making a "new game" without having to put in a whole lot of effort. I enjoy the Pokemon games, but the series hardly ever "evolves". The things they do put in, tend to be very gimmicky. They need to throw some budget into these games to REALLY improve on the graphics and scale. (We all know they damn sure have the money for it.) I know Sword and Shield look better over previous entries. That should be a given though, as it's on an actual console this time. Still looks very underwhelming for what it should and could be.

[PhoenixUp]

The majority of the animations and models shown so far seemed to had been lifted straight from, or are on par with, the 3DS games and Let's Go.

How could Game Freak argue "limited development time" as a reason not to include every existing Pokémon in the game when the graphics engine itself seemed to look virtually identical to the one they already had before?

[TK-66]

"How could Game Freak argue "limited development time" as a reason not to include every existing Pokémon in the game when the graphics engine itself seemed to look virtually identical to the one they already had before?"

Because they still have to design 50+ new Pokemon, balance them, design a new world, new character models and it's unreasonable to expect a dev team of less than 140 to pull that off. Nintendo tends to move behind in terms of development trends as we saw with HD and it's the same with the size of development teams for games like this.

Now if you want to argue Game Freak need to expand. Otherwise this problem is going to get worse with Nintendo's next system.

[Servbot41]

Pokemon was never balanced and that excuse is bunk.

[TK-66]

@servbot41

For the most part it absolutely has been balanced with a few exceptions mainly brought about by things like Mega-Evo's and a few hidden abilities. Although some of them were done for promotional purposes so I can't really fault them for those. But you gave nothing you back your claim up so I'll just ignore it from this point onward.

[jts1891]

Dude...That's crap. The stuff we've seen from Sword and Shield looks significantly better than anything from the 3DS games.

If you don't see the difference between this model

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ne...

and that

https://www.gamepur.com/fil...

You're blind. The Switch has entirely different software architecture from the 3DS, and anyone with even a casual knowledge of how making games works knows you can't port models made in two entirely different engines to each other. They have to be specifically remade.

[Zeref]

The textures and the lighting are different that's it. The model is exactly the same.

The reason it looked so different is because of the resolution. Download Sun or Moon in an emulator and increase the resolution and you'll see more clearly that it's just the textures.

That said the textures do look way better in sword and shield.

Idk how long it takes to get textures to look that good. But I think their excuse is BS. The reason they can't delay the game is because of the other parts of Pokémon. Merch, Card games, anime etc. That make a lot more money than the games. Theres pressure on Gamefreak to deliver the game on time because of those things.
If it was a standalone game, you can bet your ass that we would have a complete game,even if it needs to be delayed.

[septemberindecember]

He says in the article that they had to create all new models.

[BlaqMagiq1]

Yeah that's a lot of bull they're spewing.

[NotoriousWhiz]

Personally, I think there needs to be a great Pokemon purge. But of course, I'm a filthy casual who wouldn't dream of catching them all.

[Alexmaru]

I agree. I think that about 500 pokemon is fine for me xD

[-Foxtrot]

Has anyone seen that iffy video on twitter going around with some glitches here and there

I think they should delay it and then include all the Pokemon

Not wasting time on a crappy “Pokemon go super size” gimmick

[TK-66]

"I think they should delay it and then include all the Pokemon"

Imagine walking up to the people who've made multi-million dollar deals for the toys, trading cards and anime and saying "Hey we need another 6 months for the game. Can you delay everything you've done just for the game?". The person with the balls to do that is getting laughed out of the room and has no chance of getting a promotion ever.

Pokemon is not a franchise that's run like any other and context is important on this. There's a reason Animal Crossing can get delayed and Pokemon can't.

The only solution is expanding at Game Freak because a dev team of that size working on a AAA is something we saw 10+ years ago. Today those teams are in the hundreds.

[2BlackBelt]

Reap what you sow GameFreak.

[FilthyWeeb]

I don't even care if they don't delay it, just please promise support for these Pokémon in a future patch and I'll be happy...
If the dual pack didn't have such a dumb price I would have pre-ordered it by now, and this announcement has actually turned me off to the point of no buy.

[killswitch80]

Needed a reset switch anyway

[Lore]

Would much rather have them focus on story, exploration and quests in future entries rather than including every Pokemon. It’s the quality of the experience not the quantity. They could add so many hours of quality content if they add more meaningful tasks to do. Could employ Xenoblade staff to help with this.

[Bleucrunch]

lol yuuuup that kind of statement is laying a foundation to have multiple versions of a pokemon game. So instead of just having sword and shield, they would also release, Arrow, spear and armor, then tell us you have to purchase them all in order to catch them all.

Luckily, most gamers are not that naive to purchase several versions of the same game.....keyword most....

[CrystalFantasy3]

That's an excuse. These games make so much money. What they need to do is hire more developers to adapt to the new technological requirements of using better hardware.

I swear Nintendo fans let these people get away with too much. You "fans" need to demand more. I mean, ur already getting shafted by a bunch of different features Nintendo refuses to implement because of whatever dumbass reason Nintendo can come up with.

Demand more Nintendo fans, or get less!

[kythlyn]

Seems like an MMO would be the right place to let players catch 'em all... eventually.

[Xaevi]

What I'd personally would like to see them do is reboot the whole series. Start fresh with maybe half the amount of Pokemon that already exist, spread them throughout the world. I'll probably be buying Shield but things still look too samey to me, and giant Pokemon is just a pointless gimmick

[Tross]

You mean adding more and more creatures to the point where it's pushing 1000 is making it more and more difficult to include all of them, even with the games split into at least two versions and with multiple sets of games released every gen? Who would have thought? /s That said, they also have better and better hardware as time passes and media that allows for more storage capacity, so I imagine that helps.