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Discussion Do you think we're getting a holiday Pokémon release?

What will be the Pokémon console release for the holidays?

  • We're getting remakes, obviously

    Votes: 13 12.1%

  • We're at least getting a spin-off like Mystery Dungeon or something

    Votes: 26 24.3%

  • They're skipping this year

    Votes: 68 63.6%
  • Total voters
    107
OctoSplattack

OctoSplattack

Chain Chomp
Pronouns
He/Him
For those who don't pay attention to Pokémon, a few weeks ago, The Pokémon Company ended their Pokémon Presents livestream with an announcement for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The interesting thing about this announcement was the release window... 2025. Now, we can theorize if this is a H1 or H2 2025 release, but the important thing is that they didn't announce any mainline Pokémon game or DLC for Holiday 2024 during the event they usually announce the holiday game. This news has pretty much divided people into three different camps, and I'm curious where everyone in the Fami community falls. The three schools of thought seem to be...

Team Remake: Team Remake insists that there is far too much evidence that Unova remakes are in the works. Khu said as much, and they've been on the money for years, so they can't be completely wrong with this one. Hell, even Pyoro (hesitantly) admitted that they heard some things. And they're motherflippin' Pyoro! Plus, there's no rule saying that mainline games can only be announced during the first Presents of the year: Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were announced in a June 2017 Nintendo Direct, while Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee were unveiled in a May 2018 press conference. There's no way an operation as big as Pokémon just won't do anything for the holidays, and they've been consistent about having an RPG ready for the masses to consume every holiday since 2016. So pack your bags, we're heading to fantasy New York (which also has a desert for some reason)!

Team Spin-Off: Team Spin-Off insists that, yes, there is no way an operation as big as Pokémon just won't do anything for the holidays. But they also scoff when you bring up USUM and Let's Go. It's been years since those games, after all, so why should the pattern hold when Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl broke it in 2021? And leakers? Puh-lease. Khu didn't have the full picture and was guessing off incomplete info (or he was trolling), and Pyoro even admits his info could be outdated. No, the console gaming experience that TPC will grace us with will surely be a spin-off of some kind. Mystery Dungeon, perhaps? Surely they know how much we yearn for a new one. Or perhaps Pokken Tournament will make a surprise return. Haruki Suzaki has been pretty quiet since New Pokémon Snap. Screw it, bring Rangers back from the dead, I dunno. A lot of options that can move an easy million or two units (and with Switch 2 delayed, Nintendo probably wants a monster-shaped safety net for the Q3 fiscal report, no matter how small).

Team Nothing: Team Nothing insists that we will get nothing at all, least for consoles. Play Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket if you want a new Pokémon thing, they say. Its members don't necessarily agree on the why regarding the lack of a console Pokémon is happening this year, though some theorize Legends: Z-A was meant to be a cross-gen title and its 2025 release is actually a delay caused by the Switch 2's own rescheduling into 2025. I don't have a long paragraph for this one, sorry.

So where do you fall?
 
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I'm tentatively Team Remake, but I don't think we should get our hopes up about anything. It's possible, but not a guarantee by any means.
 
I think we're getting a spinf off somewhere along the line this year. I don't think it would be on the holiday, but it could depending on how much of a big deal it is.

What I can guarantee is that there are no BW remakes this year.
 
I'm hoping and praying for Team Nothing.

I'm still not a hundred percent sold on PLZA coming in 2025 and the resulting quality of gen 10 if it's set for 2026; GF certainly should not be considering anything before 2027 realistically, but if they're anything like Nintendo they love their series milestone anniversary releases.

Take the gap year. Cook, cook, cook some more. Don't let anything be underbaked in your releases.
 
I feel like if there was a mystery dungeon game we would have heard about it by now.
And I'm done with even having one iota of thought that the older games will come to NSO/eShop. They clearly just aren't interested in doing that for whatever reason.
 
I definitely think we're getting something but not too sure what it is, could be a new pmd, could be a remaster, maybe even a remake.

Oras and lgpe were revealed during the summer so if a remake happens it'd probably have to be by then, anything announced in fall would be a smaller spinoff or remaster
 
OctoSplattack said:
Team Remake insists that there is far too much evidence that Unova remakes are in the works. Khu said as much, and they've been on the money for years, so they can't be completely wrong with this one.
Click to expand...
Show me where Khu explicitly said there are going to be Black and White remakes for this year. Man can't speak a straight sentence to save his life.

There is no evidence, only Khu's shitty "riddles" and a bunch of tea leaf reading. The most he's said, if it can even be believed anymore, is that something Unova related is coming (at some point? Who's to say lmao)

If there were going to be mainline games this holiday I feel that they would've been announced on Pokémon day. USUM were announced later but were merely expansions, basically the equivalent of DLC, and LGPE were announced later as well, but not after another game had already been announced for the year after.
 
Unova remakes

Pyoro said it
Khu said it
Goopy Snail said it

Why not reveal it at the presents then?
1. It's not as hype as Legends Z-A
2. They need time to polish it
3. If they revealed it at the same time as Z-A, Unova fans would have been upset because BDSP+PLA set the expectation that the traditional remake has to match the experimental game
 
I do hope I’m wrong, but for the moment I’m still leaning towards an ILCA-developed Unova remake coming this year. I think it makes perfect sense to wait until later on in the year to announce it; it wouldn’t generate nearly as much positive response as Legends Z-A has managed. It’s probably a cut-and-dry retread of the original games, so there’s no need to announce it on Pokémon Day when there isn’t much to say about it, especially when it will immediately come with the baggage of BDSP’s reception. Plus, if they are holding the reveal for later, they can use the opportunity to pair it with gameplay for Z-A, thus diverting some of the ire they will inevitably earn.

Again, I don’t necessarily want anything this year, I’m just getting heavy USUM Deja vu here. So I say June Presents, BW reveal there.
 
I'm mostly Team Please Just Take the Year Off and Show Us You're Learning, but also tentatively Team Spin-off (Mystery Dungeon DX had like a 2 month reveal-to-release turnaround, so it's definitely possible) or Team NSO/Eshop Releases of Old Pokemon RPGs

Alternatively, wild card, Team Hagi Ports of Orre Games
 
VintoWin said:
Team Pokemon mobile card game.

It IS a game.
Click to expand...
Yeah I'd say this IS the Pokemon release for this year. And it counts as a spinoff so I'm on team spinoff. I wouldn't object if TPC does decide to give us another Pokemon thing. Like pinball, or another puzzler, or heck even an idle clicker.
 
I'd like to propose a 4th team: Team "We're Definitely Getting Something But I Have No Idea What".

Getting nothing this year is unbelievably unlikely. We never get a full year without a Pokémon release on Switch. There will be something. It could be a remake, it could be a spinoff, it could be ports of Gens 1-3. But there will be something. All we know is that it won't be by Game Freak.
 
Wockio said:
Unova remakes

Pyoro said it
Khu said it
Goopy Snail said it

Why not reveal it at the presents then?
1. It's not as hype as Legends Z-A
2. They need time to polish
3. If they revealed it at the same time as Z-A, Unova fans would have been upset because BDSP+PLA set the expectation that the traditional remake has to match the experimental game
Click to expand...
Who is Goopy Snail and why should we trust this person? Also why are we trusting Khu at this point?
 
Holidays 2024 would be 3 years after the release of BDSP which seemingly had a protracted development time of 1.5-2 years. In theory this should be enough time even for ILCA to put out a decent remake of Black & White assuming they started right away. I can't imagine GF/TPC were too happy with the state BDSP was released in but it still sold a cool 15m units, they're not gonna leave that kind of money on the table.
 
A spinoff could happen or not, but the chances of one getting a holiday slot seem low.

I could see an outsourced remake possibly being announced in the next few months, but I don't have especially strong opinions one way or another.
 
0
Hopefully more of these

1292683.jpg
 
40:60, no to yes for me. They probably would have announced it by now. But it's not entirely impossible they are waiting for a later date for whatever reason.
 
0
No, we won't be getting any mainline remakes and the chances of it happening were always low.

Gen 4 -> Gen 2 Remakes
Gen 6 -> Gen 3 Remakes
Gen 8 -> Gen 4 Remakes
Gen 10 -> Gen 5 Remakes

Black/White remakes will come out after Gen 10 DLC is finished. And yes, I know Gamefreak doesn't have to follow patterns (and FireRed/LeafGreen don't fit in nicely because it was early on), but they've been consistent with this for a while. No reason to think they'd suddenly break pattern.

As far as I'm concerned Pyoro is the only trustworthy leaker who has "teased" Gen 5 Remakes. But they made it clear they weren't confident in that. Pyoro is the type of leaker who would see something somewhere in a backend (YouTube, eshop, whatever), why would they know about Gen 5 Remakes if a trailer wasn't coming soon?
 
Wockio said:
Unova remakes

Pyoro said it
Khu said it
Goopy Snail said it

Why not reveal it at the presents then?
1. It's not as hype as Legends Z-A
2. They need time to polish it
3. If they revealed it at the same time as Z-A, Unova fans would have been upset because BDSP+PLA set the expectation that the traditional remake has to match the experimental game
Click to expand...

Having outsourced Unova remakes this early and sandwiched between gen 9 and gen 6 this year makes no sense at all.

The way TPC operates is that every mainline game is the spearhead of a bigger marketing campaign promoting that gen. They are always focusing on one gen, and everything is carefully coordinated. Right now we are still on their gen 9 era, anime is gen 9, TCG is gen 9, games (DLC) are gen 9. Next year, with PLZA, it will be gen 6.

Whenever they release a remake, they have another campaign focusing on that gen. They will have new Pokémon forms, an anime tie in, a TCG set, related merch etc.

If Unova remakes were coming, there would be all of that, and even if it was an outsourced game, there would be something made by GF as well because they want to have new Pokémon forms there. Sure, we only had one instance of an outsourced game so far, but that one tells us GF is incredibly conservative about outsourcing, they want to keep all creative efforts in house. BDSP had 0 new stuff, it was restricted to simply copying the original games 1:1. No new forms, no new characters, no new designs for the existing characters, they didn't even get new official artwork, which all previous remakes did. Instead they went with those hideous renders on the covers, the first time we ever had a mainline Pokémon game without hand drawn art on the cover.

Now, do you really think GF would waste an entire marketing push on gen 5, one of the most popular generations right now, on a single outsourced game without new designs and content they would use to sell merch and have tie ins on other media? Especially with PLZA already announced for next year which means they will inevitably start a marketing cycle focused on gen 6 then, mega evolution and all the inevitable new forms from that game with accompanying anime and TCG? Why would they waste Unova in such a terrible sandwiched slot, just to sell copies of the game? Yes, it would sell a lot of copies, but still a fraction of the revenue they usually have considering the multimedia thing.

That's just not how they operate, and I would be baffled to find otherwise.
 
A spin off is fairly likely imo. It's been awhile since the last Mystery Dungeon game which was a remake, it's been awhile since New Pokémon Snap as well(so maybe even Pokken Tournament 2 is in the cards?) and spin offs can be announced at any time and don't have to be announced at Pokémon Presents, just like Detective Pikachu was announced at the June Direct.

I think we get a spin off revealed in the April Direct for late summer or early fall. No idea what kind tho. Nintendo's been coming back to a lot of Game Cube stuff with remasters, so maybe Colosseum, maybe they get Bandai Namco to make a New Pokémon Stadium, there are quite a few possibilities. I think Pokémon TCG coming for Switch as well as mobile(like Café and Unite) would be a big deal.

There's a very, very thin possibility that if anything was to be announced on the next Pokémon presents, it'd be a Let's GO game(did they do a lot of tie in marketing with Gen 1 when Pikachu/Evee came out?) or gen 6 remasters(that wouldn't even be marketed like the regular remakes because they'll eventually do reimagined remakes of them in the future). Pokémon Legends Z-A is coming next year, so maybe X and Y remasters would be a good fit for this holiday season. It wouldn't take anything away from the development of Legends nor Gen X. Announcing them closer to release would be to avoid backlash, now that the audience is already eager for the Legends game in that gen next year.
 
0
I think there's a non-zero chance they drop a remaster of X and Y around the holidays. Simple HD ports for $40, shadow-dropped on the EShop during a Pokémon Presents, with a physical release around a month later.
 
~okapi said:
I do hope I’m wrong, but for the moment I’m still leaning towards an ILCA-developed Unova remake coming this year.
Click to expand...
I don't think that company should be given anymore remakes after the last one, it was really poor imho
 
Quoted by: N75
1
My gut is saying we're getting BW remakes this year
I know they probably would've announced them on Pokémon Day, I know Pyoro was hesitant with their information but I can't shake the feeling I have
 
0
Cheetah6442 said:
Who is Goopy Snail and why should we trust this person? Also why are we trusting Khu at this point?
Click to expand...
Goopy snail is someone who just joined here several days ago and keeps insisting he has info about a gen 5 game, atm I wouldn't put much stock in what he says unless he has something more concrete
 
We could get the 5G remake by ILCA but I don't know, why wouldn't they have announced it at the Pokémon Presents ? Anyway I don't car, I hope at least Legends will be H2 2025 and not H1, so we can get gen 10 in 2026.
 
0
TheMindOfThomas said:
I think there's a non-zero chance they drop a remaster of X and Y around the holidays. Simple HD ports for $40, shadow-dropped on the EShop during a Pokémon Presents, with a physical release around a month later.
Click to expand...
I'd be quite interested in that because the 3DS games are ugly, so a little polish would go a long way.
 
0
Sure. I don't see why not. This entire console generation Pokemon has been doing more and more "no one saw it coming" things so why not one more before it ends?
 
Maybe a spin-off, but on current evidence seems like nothing on console. Who knows though
 
0
Hopefully gen 5 remakes even if it's by ILCA. I am very disappointed if the next Pokémon game is another Legends. Yes, I know I am in the minority here, but everything about the last Legends game was a disappointment outside of the new Pokémon. Yes I'll still buy it because I am a sucker.
 
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Quoted by: Ab
1
I feel like the rumored BW remake is leakbait. Like Leo said, sandwiching gen 5 in the middle of promoting SV and ZA makes no sense from a marketing perspective. What I imagine may have happened is that Khu heard about both ZA and the fake BW remakes. Closer to the Presents, he hears ZA's codename and figures it's for the Unova titles (hence the Sango-Delphis-Ikkaku tease). When the Unova remakes don't materialize, instead of saying "I heard about this but idk why it didn't happen" like a normal person would, he chose to protect his ego and nuke his credibility further by playing off all the Unova hints as trolling.

As for the poll, I'm guessing they will use a spin-off title. If Pokemon needs to be annual, they need to accept that a mainline title cannot come out every year. They should emulate Zelda's model: anything can count as the main title of the year, whether it be a Warriors spin-off, a remaster of a 10yo game, or a full fat mainline release.
 
i don't see any reason for them not to have announced whatever would release this holiday at the pokemon day presents. so, on that note, we aren't getting anything this year.

and thank goodness for that.
 
TheQuietone said:
Hopefully gen 5 remakes even if it's by ILCA. I àm very disappointed if the next Pokémon game is another Legends. Yes, I know I am in the minority here, but everything about the last Legends game was a disappointment outside of the new Pokémon. Yes I'll still buy it because I am a sucker.
Click to expand...
I'd rather a good remake came out even if that means it comes out in another year or two. I'm tired of playing low effort slop. (I enjoyed BDSP mostly but never finished it) Id rather it just be a spin off this year and give the mainline titles room to breath and more dev time.
 
0
neil said:
I don't think that company should be given anymore remakes after the last one, it was really poor imho
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how people can look at things like One Piece Odyssey/Sand Land and primarily place the blame on ILCA for BDSP, at least on a visual and technical level. The game likely had less than two years in development (including pre-production).
 
N75 said:
I'm not sure how people can look at things like One Piece Odyssey/Sand Land and primarily place the blame on ILCA for BDSP, at least on a visual and technical level. The game likely had less than two years in development (including pre-production).
Click to expand...
Because their name is on it and it’s not very good
 
Quoted by: Ab
1
Bowser Sr. said:
Sure. I don't see why not. This entire console generation Pokemon has been doing more and more "no one saw it coming" things so why not one more before it ends?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I remember 2022 very vividly, we were all thinking the next gen would be 2023 because 2022 had Arceus out by like 2 weeks when the Presents that announced Scarlet and Violet happened. That was TPC saying "nah, we stick to the schedule no matter what". Then this year not only they don't announce a console game for 2024 but also announce a game for the following year(potentially holiday?) that's both a Legends game and Pokémon Z after 12 years.

In all honesty them holding a Presents in May and announcing a Let's Go sequel would be just peak Pokémon.
 
0
Quoting myself from the other topic

Triistan said:
I'm starting to think that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have learned a lot of lessons from the releases of BDSP and PLA, as well as SV.



Probably, BDSP was commissioned after PLA's development began, and they outsourced it to ILCA as a classic remake just in case the fanbase didn't appreciate the approach taken with PLA in the Sinnoh region.



The result was the most (PLA) and least (BDSP) acclaimed games of the series since BW. Additionally, in 2022, they damaged the brand with the poor state of SV at launch.



Now, I can see them addressing these issues in the following ways:



- Give ILCA more time; perhaps imho they didn't have three years for BDSP. It's possible it wasn't planned until PLA's development became too "strange" or risky for a remake. With a 2024 Christmas release, they will likely have had three years of development for a new remake, and they'll reveal it when they're ready.



- Space out releases and give more time to Game Freak. PLZA could now have 3.5-4 years of development, and Generation 10 will benefit from the same development time, with a release as early as 2026.



- Avoid cannibalizing releases too close together. BDSP and PLA were both main Gen 4 games released simultaneously. Perhaps a PLA release in December 2022 could have benefited the sales of both games (and the SV development).



- Avoid releasing two games of the same generation in a short timeframe. If ILCA releases a Gen 5 remake this year, it won't be overshadowed by Gen 6 PLZA hype, and The Pokémon Company will have two different generations to push merchandise, the anime, the trading card game, etc., while Game Freak works on Gen 10.



So, I'm starting to feel confident about a BW release this year and PLZA in the second half of 2025. They announced PLZA first because otherwise, everyone would have asked, "Where is Legends Kyurem?" "Why only a mediocre ILCA remake?" as they did when they first announced Gen 8 at E3 2017 and released LGPE in 2018, with Pokémon Sword and Shield coming only in 2019. In this way, they made the best marketing choice, in my opinion.
Click to expand...

So yes, after correctly predicting Switch 2 in may this year I’m all in on BW remake this holiday.
 
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0
Leo said:
Having outsourced Unova remakes this early and sandwiched between gen 9 and gen 6 this year makes no sense at all.

The way TPC operates is that every mainline game is the spearhead of a bigger marketing campaign promoting that gen. They are always focusing on one gen, and everything is carefully coordinated. Right now we are still on their gen 9 era, anime is gen 9, TCG is gen 9, games (DLC) are gen 9. Next year, with PLZA, it will be gen 6.

Whenever they release a remake, they have another campaign focusing on that gen. They will have new Pokémon forms, an anime tie in, a TCG set, related merch etc.

If Unova remakes were coming, there would be all of that, and even if it was an outsourced game, there would be something made by GF as well because they want to have new Pokémon forms there. Sure, we only had one instance of an outsourced game so far, but that one tells us GF is incredibly conservative about outsourcing, they want to keep all creative efforts in house. BDSP had 0 new stuff, it was restricted to simply copying the original games 1:1. No new forms, no new characters, no new designs for the existing characters, they didn't even get new official artwork, which all previous remakes did. Instead they went with those hideous renders on the covers, the first time we ever had a mainline Pokémon game without hand drawn art on the cover.

Now, do you really think GF would waste an entire marketing push on gen 5, one of the most popular generations right now, on a single outsourced game without new designs and content they would use to sell merch and have tie ins on other media? Especially with PLZA already announced for next year which means they will inevitably start a marketing cycle focused on gen 6 then, mega evolution and all the inevitable new forms from that game with accompanying anime and TCG? Why would they waste Unova in such a terrible sandwiched slot, just to sell copies of the game? Yes, it would sell a lot of copies, but still a fraction of the revenue they usually have considering the multimedia thing.

That's just not how they operate, and I would be baffled to find otherwise.
Click to expand...
Legends Arceus and BDSP were closely tied together in marketing, but releasing two games that close to each other like that isn't really the most effective way to use the outsourced remakes, and I don't think they're especially likely to do that again now that their seeming anxiety about doing Legends has been assuaged. Even before the February Pokémon Presents this year, I thought we'd most likely see a "Legends" game or an outsourced remake, but definitely not both.

The smart way to handle the outsourced remakes is to use them to fill gaps and relieve pressure on Game Freak to be constantly releasing. With a fair amount of space between Legends games and remakes, they could continue to coordinate, or they could just be separate and have separate marketing pushes. The anime, tcg, etc. certainly don't need new Pokémon and/or forms to produce original content focused on older regions at this point (nor did they ever, really, that only started being a significant thing for ORAS), and the outsourced remakes wouldn't even feature that sort of content in the first place going by BDSP.

Does this mean I think that outsourced remakes are happening this year? Not necessarily, especially if ZA's actual release date ends up on the earlier side of 2025. What I do think though, is that the outsourced remakes can and should operate fairly independently, because they only have value insofar as they provide access to some version of out of print games, and allow Game Freak to invest sufficient time and resources into more original games.
 
Pokemaniac said:
Legends Arceus and BDSP were closely tied together in marketing, but releasing two games that close to each other like that isn't really the most effective way to use the outsourced remakes, and I don't think they're especially likely to do that again now that their seeming anxiety about doing Legends has been assuaged. Even before the February Pokémon Presents this year, I thought we'd most likely see a "Legends" game or an outsourced remake, but definitely not both.

The smart way to handle the outsourced remakes is to use them to fill gaps and relieve pressure on Game Freak to be constantly releasing. With a fair amount of space between Legends games and remakes, they could continue to coordinate, or they could just be separate and have separate marketing pushes. The anime, tcg, etc. certainly don't need new Pokémon and/or forms to produce original content focused on older regions at this point (nor did they ever, really, that only started being a significant thing for ORAS), and the outsourced remakes wouldn't even feature that sort of content in the first place going by BDSP.

Does this mean I think that outsourced remakes are happening this year? Not necessarily, especially if ZA's actual release date ends up on the earlier side of 2025. What I do think though, is that the outsourced remakes can and should operate fairly independently, because they only have value insofar as they provide access to some version of out of print games, and allow Game Freak to invest sufficient time and resources into more original games.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, I think what they're gonna do is to have the remakes be a collaboration from now on, with the bulk of the work being outsourced, but a small team of GF creatives to come up with some new content.

My point was that I don't think that's going to happen this year because it's a bad slot for a gen 5 marketing push, it would be cutting its legs hard when they would have to move on to gen 6 early next year.

If GF would be releasing a game with their involvement this year, they would just announce it instead of announcing a game for next year, that's only logical. And a game without their involvement just isn't happening on its own for the reasons I talked about in my post.
 
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