The 2025 Pokemon Day Presentation Does Not Inspire Confidence In The Franchise

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XSbqzEGuaDeAvgARtxawS?si=jt-yOvEzSGCfGySygsIdVw

So here we are, Pokemon Day 2025. As has become the standard, The Pokemon Company has released a presentation that is designed to explain both what to expect from the immediate future and what is coming down the line. I realize my predictions were a little lofty and that some of the things I was hoping for was more wishful thinking than anything grounded in reality (you can see them here), but there was nothing in this presentation that necessarily gave a sense that things are going to get better.

So for starters, the focus on mobile every time baffles me. I'm not saying they shouldn't talk about these games in this presentation but there isn't much shown off for these games to sell them to an audience member who isn't already playing. Who was waiting to play Pokemon Masters EX until May and Brandon joined with Primal Kyogre and Groudon? Who was holding out on Pokemon Go until Kubfu was the focus of a season? I still don't quite get the use case for Pokemon Sleep but there it is, every year. The one that makes the most sense is focusing on Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket because that's relatively new.

Let's talk about the Netflix deal for a second before we move on as well. It's been a few years since Netflix signed a deal to produce shows and movies for the franchise and the only thing they've done so far is that stop-motion show in the hotel. Don't get me wrong, the show is charming but is anything else in development? Aren't they making a sequel to Detective Pikachu at Lionsgate? Isn't there still an anime? Why are we only talking about this one Netflix show?

Then comes the first of the two big announcements of the presentation: the proud announcement of their big, lucrative new lawsuit. I am convinced the only reason Pokemon Champions exists is so they can shut down the fan game Pokemon Showdown, but let's pretend for a minute they're doing this for a better reason. This is a battle simulator, a 3D battle simulator at that, in the same vein as Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Pokemon Battle Revolution. When these games came out, 3D battles were not available in the base games so there was a novelty to this style of game. Now, every single game does what this one does. Granted, you can't do it on your phone, but if the selling point is battling with your own pokemon using past game mechanics (specifically Mega Evolution and Terastallization which I may have spelt correctly), why is this not just an add-on to Pokemon Home? I don't understand why this is independent, and on iOS and Android, when anyone who wants to is just going to use it on Switch, you know, where the pokemon come from anyway.

So then we get to the big announcement of the day, Pokemon Legends: Z-A. There's a deceptively small amount of information released in this trailer, despite the fact that it has been a literal full year since the last time we saw this. Is the big reveal that we can move the pokemon during battles? Why was that not shown last year to be like "hey we are going back to Legends and we are refining/upgrading the battle system." I fully expect Legends to be a testing ground for upgrades that will eventually come to the mainline games, but after a year the big development is that you can move your pokemon in the battle area to help them dodge and the graphics look comparable to Let's Go.

There is also the Generation X/30th anniversary elephant in the room. With both these things on the horizon, it's weird that we have no indication of what's coming past (presumably) this November. Are they going to spend the 30th anniversary with small, incremental free content updates for Legends: Z-A like Legends: Arceus had? That doesn't feel like a good celebration for a franchise that's been around three decades. Are they going to announce the new game next February on the anniversary and then release it at the end of the year? Coming off what was openly a longer development cycle for Legends: Z-A, this will appear that the game was not given the same care.

There are also two major concerns I have looking to the future after these announcements. First is related to Legends: Z-A and the Switch 2. Keeping in mind that we don't know the actual release window of the Switch 2, it feels weird that this game is a Switch release in the year the next-gen console is launching. If the Switch 2 comes out in the early summer, this game will release six months later, and if it comes out this holiday season, it will be available for sale alongside the new console. While the Switch 2 will be backward compatible, if someone is buying a new console, they're probably going to buy a new software that takes advantage of the hardware's capabilities.

The second concern is how these two announcements and what wasn't discussed kind of all coalesce.  The next generation was not talked about but it will presumably come out in 2026 or 2027, I'd only assume next year to correspond the major generation number with the major anniversary. If it comes in 2026, as I said the perception will be that the landmark game will have been worked on for only one year, and that one year will be sharing development resources with the (again, presumed based on past games) support of Legends: Z-A. If the game isn't perfect, the fans will revolt. On top of this, two of the things that could have been major selling points for the new generation (the return of past gimmicks/all the National Dex pokemon and upgraded battle graphics) may not be prioritized since they may just assume a player who wants that experience will play Pokemon Champions. The battle graphics will be held to that standard regardless so if the mainline games don't look as good, that will be knocked by critics and fans.

Meanwhile I still cannot figure out why Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, and LeafGreen are not available on the Switch, either bundled in as a collection to buy or on Nintendo Switch Online. The excuse that you can't transfer from NSO to Bank is wearing thin since clearly the way around that is to release the games as a collection on a cartridge or digital with something like PokeTransporter included. It is mind-boggling that we had a solution for this on the 3DS but they cannot figure out how to make it work on the Switch.

In my opinion, this presentation raises serious doubts about the current direction of the studio. Nothing about what was shown today reads like they have a solid long-term plan for the core games and the spin-offs on mobile need that content to fuel their longevity. Let's be real, Pokemon Go is headed for a wall since they've started introducing Galar's pokemon and Dynamax.  Presumably within the next year they are going to run out of new pokemon to introduce, and then what do they do if Generation X doesn't arrive in 2026. How does a game built on the collection of pokemon survive having no new pokemon to collect for the first time in the ten years it will have existed at that point? The Pokemon franchise is meant to be a well-oiled machine of games, trading cards, merch, spin-offs, television shows, and other media that all work in tandem to generate billions upon billions of dollars. The machine appears to be slowing down and let's see how that plays out.