The Pokémon Company’s chief operating officer, Takato Utsunomiya, has revealed that the company is having “more and more conversations” regarding balancing quality and quantity with its future game releases.
Last November, Pokémon Scarlet, and Violet were released on the Nintendo Switch, and while they were quite easily the series’ most ambitious titles to date, they were heavily criticized for their overwhelming number of bugs, performance issues, and general lack of polish. Given the volume of these issues, it's no wonder that the Pokémon Company have seen fit to address them.
Understandably, this prompted countless conversations within the fanbase regarding the quality of Pokémon titles, but these have also been going on within The Pokémon Company itself. Speaking to ComicBook, Utsunomiya was asked if the Pokémon series was anchored to a certain schedule which influences how often it releases new video games.
"I think in general, if you look at the past, the path we've taken up until now has been this constant release, always regularly releasing products on a fairly fixed kind of a cadence, you might say," Utsunomiya replied (via a translator). "Always having these products able to be introduced and new experiences for our customers, and that's how we've operated up until now. I think we're still operating in that way, but there are more and more conversations, as the development environments change, about how we can continue to do this; while making sure that we're ensuring really quality products are also being introduced."
While Utsunomiya didn’t give any indication of what the company could be considering implementing as a means of ensuring higher-quality products in the future, based on his response, it doesn’t sound like game releases are going to be slowing down. At the time of writing, we’re getting closer and closer to the release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s DLC. Part one, The Teal Mask, will launch on September 13, while part two, The Indigo Disk, currently has a vague winter 2023 release window.
If you’re a big Pokémon fan, or you’re just looking for a place in the series to get started, be sure to take a look at our ranking of the best Pokémon games - it's a great way to sink your teeth into some of the best RPGs of all time.
