State of Pokemon 2024

A writeup of EPIC proportions

Author

Cooltrainer Ace
February 15, 2024 • Estimated Read Time: 13 minutes

Howdy Cooltrainer and welcome back to the Victory Road. I hope you had a successful Valentine’s Day, whether that meant courting your crush or arm wrestling with a Rhydon to release those pent up feelings of rage and despair. Either way, it’s all good.

Seems like I struck out this year with Lass Angelica. Don’t worry. I’m going to perfect my mushroom cupcakes and win her over still. If you know any good recipes, send ‘em my way.

Here’s this week’s EPIC rundown (estimated read time, 9 minutes):

Before we get down to business. Your old pal Ace has a quick question. How can I make Victory Road even more awesome?

State of Mainline Pokémon Games 2024

With Pokémon Day fast approaching on February 27, let’s take a look at the state of the mainline games. Where we’ve been. Where we are. And a glimpse at what might be next.

In the past two and a half years, we’ve seen Game Freak experimenting in three different ways with Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Legends Arceus, and Scarlet/Violet.

  1. Passing remakes to third party developers (ILCA)

  2. Open world (Scarlet & Violet & Legends Arceus)

  3. Major game mechanic experimentation (Legends Arceus)

You could grab a 100 random fans on r/Pokemon or Twitter and they’d be almost evenly divided on which of those three titles were their favorite (and least favorite). All have their own set of quirks and issues. All represented steps forward in different ways but didn’t quite come together into a hallmark release. Two steps forward and one step back, as they say.

Ignoring that fans of anything are louder (and generally bigger a-holes) with every passing year, there is justifiable discontent in Poké-Paradise.

Fans may not agree on what they want, but it’s a consensus that they want something more. And by more, I mean depth, not breadth. Quality not quantity.

After a blistering release schedule between November 2021 (Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl) and November 2022 (Scarlet & Violet) with Legends Arceus in between (January 2022), it’s time to slow thing down.

But is that even possible?

There is obvious pressure to keep up with the anime, merchandise, and TCG. Don’t believe me? According to sales and revenue numbers from 2023, the top income streams for the Pokémon franchise all-time are:

  1. Licensed merchandise - $102,905,000,000

  2. Trading Card Game - $21,000,000,000

  3. Mainline games - $16,304,000,000

Those numbers are billions, in case you didn’t notice. And they’re snowballing. Year-over year, Pokémon regularly sees record profit growth (including a monster 36.5% increase between 2021 and 2022).

Merchandise and TCG depend on new Pokémon. New Pokémon come from mainline game releases. Doesn’t take an MBA to see the games are largely a delivery vehicle for intellectual property to drive more licensing and product sales.

Game Freak is tied to Pokémon with golden handcuffs. Victims of their own utility. They’re the HM mule of the entire franchise, a part of the team to get it where it needs to go next. Gotta feed the Snorlax.

Which brings us to the new Youngsters on the route: Palworld & Pocket Pair.

Love it/hate it/don’t care about it, we can’t discuss the state of Pokémon games in February 2024 without mentioning Palworld. While not a “Pokemon Killer” It still deserves a mention because of what it accomplished with a relatively slim budget and the hype it generated as a game still in alpha.

The plethora of bugs and the runaway hit of a small, scrappy company like Pocket Pair draw ironic comparisons to the original Pokémon Red/Green/Blue and Game Freak/Creatures Inc.

More than 12 million copies SOLD with another 7 million plus playing on GamePass (as of two weeks ago) puts Palworld at numbers rivaling Diamond & Pearl’s lifetime sales after one month.

The best way I can sum this up is stealing the video meme going around from Iron Man “Nintendo talking to Gamefreak after seeing Palworld.”

In the context of this discussion it doesn’t matter if Pokémon sues them or not. It doesn’t matter if they ripped off models or not. Stolen models don’t account for the success the game is seeing.

And no, not every Palworld player is a past Pokémon player. Who knows what the percentage is? But the Pokémon fans who enjoy it love Palworld for the features they’ve wanted in Pokémon for years:

  • Open world

  • Real-time combat

  • For an older audience

  • Creatures can follow you

  • True multiplayer experience

  • All creatures available in one version

  • Hundreds of creatures can be used as mounts.

It’s not about what Palworld is doing. It’s about what Pokémon isn’t doing with the resources and position they have in the market.

Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl

BDSP is often labeled a soulless remake, a shell of Platinum’s glory pawned off to ILCA for a quick cash-grab. Regardless of the end product, it’s a turning point in the life of Pokémon & Game Freak because they finally let go (or were forced to release) the development reins of a mainline Pokémon game.

Going forward, expect to see more third-party developed mainline games. Whether they succeed or fail depends largely on how much these devs are forced to paint by numbers and color inside the lines (or not). Leaving the chibi art style out of the discussion, complaints around BDSP revolve around the fact that it leaves out a number of Platinum’s features and didn’t add anything notable to the game (before you say Grand Underground, I said “notable”). Compare that to the numerous and delightful tweaks/improvements we saw with Heart Gold/Soul Silver.

Reading the Oddish leaves, it looks like ALL remakes may get the third-party shipment. However, the numbers aren’t great. As of the latest financial reporting, BDSP has still sold 10,000 less copies than Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. Still the bestselling remake of all-time to this point but hardly jaw-dropping.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to sell ports of older gens? Give the trainers what they want!

Legends Arceus

Upfront I admit that I am Team PLA (and it’s arr-key-us, btw). Bad news is, the sales numbers just weren’t good. It’s sold less than 15 million copies, making it the worst-selling game that wasn’t a remake or a part three… ever.

Of course, we’ve never seen anything like Legends Arceus before. Would it have sold better by not being on the heels of BD/SP? Possibly. Some players had to make a financial choice between the two..

The bold new direction is important for the mainline games even if it didn’t translate to huge sales numbers. Game Freak took a chance. Isn’t that what we’ve asked for all along? Battle styles, storyline, dex size, and catching mechanics are all personal preferences. I can’t wait to see what they learned and hopefully implemented from PLA in whatever comes next.

My heart hopes Legends doesn’t go the way of Conquest and Colosseum— forgotten spin-offs lost to time.

Scarlet & Violet

Scarlet & Violet intensified division between fans of the mainline games, even more so than Sword & Shield.

I’m not a graphics snob but the clipping, glitches and general performance issues can’t be ignored, even if they didn’t impact your enjoyment of the game. The non-linear promises were half-baked, like lipstick painted on a Lechonk.

“Multiplayer” has it’s own set of issues, especially with the connection failures and sometimes clunky timers in raid battles.

Instead of the Let’s Go feature and a dedicated ride/fly/surf/climb Pokémon in Koraidon/Miraidon, could we not have simply used the Pokémon in on our team to serve the same functions in the overworld similar to LGPE?

Synchro Machine has potential but feels tacked on right now, coming at the very end of the games cycle in the last DLC as a gimmick without purpose.

This goes for many other features in Scarlet & Violet, including “open world” and the academy classes, plus relationship events (or whatever you want to call them). Now they’ve been introduced, I want to know how they’ll be iterated in future titles. I’m also a little worried to find out.

What comes next?

We’re looking at the first games to be released in a post-Legends Arceus and Scarlet & Violet world (which were partially developed in tandem, meaning PLA didn’t influence S/V).

The saying goes in construction that you can have something 1. fast, 2. cheap, 3. quality but not all three. In a strange compromise, Pokémon & Game Freak generally gave us: 1. fast, 2. not cheap, 3. debatable overall quality for three releases in a row.

Guessing what comes next is like trying to predict the pattern on a Spinda. Gen 10 isn’t here yet. That leaves us likely to get a one-off or two to bridge the gap between now and Gen 10/Switch 2/Pokémon's 30th anniversary in 2026:

  • Third-party remake

  • Let’s Go-style game

  • A Legends sequel

This is fine. It’s also fine (but unlikely) if we don’t get something new this year. Would any logical fan really be upset with that?

With Gen 9 sunsetting, Game Freak, the Pokémon Company, and fans find themselves at a crossroads years in the making. Will the powers that be take what they learned and experimented with from the trio of recent releases and make or leap forward? Or are they satisfied printing money with the same formulas, plus or minus a grab bag of features and mechanics?

The next release may tell the tale.

Pokémon GO Sinnoh Tour

The fourth gen is overrated back with the long-awaited Road to Sinnoh event! From Monday, February 19, at 10 a.m. to Friday, February 23, at 10 p.m. local time, meet some of the most beloved Sinnoh Pokémon

Event Bonuses:

  • 1/2 Egg Hatch Distance when Eggs are placed in an Incubator during the event period.

  • The Remote Raid Pass limit is increased to 10 from Monday, February 19 to Thursday, February 22.

  • There will be no limit on Remote Raids from Friday, February 23 to Sunday, February 25.

  • The following Pokémon hatch from 2 km eggs: Budew, Chingling, Bonsly, Happiny, Munchlax, Riolu, Mantyke (all shiny unlocked).

Field Research Encounters: Heatran, Origin Forme Giratina, Cresselia, Darkrai (all shiny unlocked)

Wild Encounters: Turtwig, Chimchar, Piplup (shiny unlocked). Rare encounters include Grotle, Monferno, Prinplup (shiny locked).

Raids:

  • One-Star: Turtwig, Chimchar, and Piplup (all shiny unlocked)

  • Three-Star: Grotle, Monferno, and Prinplup (all shiny locked)

Pokémon appearing in the Five-Star Raids during this event are determined by the date:

  • Monday, February 19: Shiny unlocked Darkrai

  • Tuesday, February 20: Shiny unlocked Cresselia

  • Thursday, February 22: Shiny Unlocked Heatran

  • Friday, February 23: Shiny unlocked Origin Forme Giratina

Pokémon appearing in Five-Star Raids on Wednesday, February 21 depend on your region:

  • Shiny unlocked Uxie: Asia-Pacific

  • Shiny unlocked Mesprit: Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India

  • Shiny unlocked Azelf: The Americas and Greenland

Card of the Week

Grab this Paldean Fates Ceruledge card featuring the Pokémon Day stamp as a gift with purchase at Pokémon Center and other participating retailers (Game Stop & Best Buy) starting February 23, 2024, while supplies last.

Forget Bruce Wayne. Ceruledge is the REAL dark knight.

Random encounters around the internet

Obscure Pokémon Fact (from u/Mx_Toniy_4869)

Until next time,
Cooltrainer “oracle of Oldale” Ace