The thing that annoys me is that they rake in ridiculous amounts of money but they're too cheap to make a good game because they know that people will buy it up even if it's dogs*** because it's Pokemon.
I admit I've played all the main games except Violet and Scarlet, but black and white were probably the last games I really enjoyed.
Here's to hoping the next games on switch 2 are great
i believe it’s been revealed at some point in the last year or so that the budget for either Legends Z-A or Legends Arceus was like ~$20 million, which is not a whole lot for game development budgets. they make bank off the games because the budgets are relatively low and it’s very obvious.
Take this with a grain of salt (I've heard it in a YT video, but I can't verify it), but it's apparently on purpose, because GameFreak realized that they would be making Pokemon games till the heat death of the universe, so they are only making tiny incremental improvements to the games. According to an interview (which, again, I can't find anymore), someone at the studio said that every time they make a bigger "generational leap", like moving from 2D to 3D, that becomes the new baseline they have to meet, while only veeery slightly improving on the previous game still satisfies the majority of the fans and lets them make a lot of money, while also giving them an easier time developing the next game, because the "minimum viable product floor" is kept artificially low.
That must be why they also are so litigious towards others who decide to move in "on their turf", like Pal World. Those who want to take a piece out of the same genre of games, while also being very strongly experimental must feel like a threat to that kind of incremental policy.
Imagine a Pokémon Company that was less apt to spend on lawsuits, and more on making stronger entries in the IP. From my viewpoint, the "withered technology" and "incremental policy" are becoming more exposed as a raw nerve over time, that they have to spend increasingly more on the law side of things to cover for. I think it's a symptom of traditionalist policies that are costing them ironically more to maintain than it would be to just adapt.
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u/Misteryenko Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
The thing that annoys me is that they rake in ridiculous amounts of money but they're too cheap to make a good game because they know that people will buy it up even if it's dogs*** because it's Pokemon.
I admit I've played all the main games except Violet and Scarlet, but black and white were probably the last games I really enjoyed.
Here's to hoping the next games on switch 2 are great