Takato Utsunomiya, COO at The Pokémon Company, has spoken to ComicBook.com in an interview during the Pokémon World Championships in Yokohama, Japan, during which it was hinted at that the idea of slowing down the pace of new Pokémon game releases has – at the very least – been floated within the company.
“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 told the outlet 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’s 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 the angle of the reporting on these comments has leaned toward the idea of slowing down new game releases for the series, it could also be inferred that TPC is thinking about how it can stick to the established pace while improving the quality of the games it’s releasing.
These comments come following last year’s somewhat-bungled release of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, which were both plagued by poor performance on the Switch along with a long list of issues and fear-inducing visual bugs. The games still sold exceptionally, but its certainly shone a spotlight on the rapid speed at which developer Game Freak is expected to pump new titles out.
Said cadence has already shifted to a degree, with both these newer titles as well as the previous Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield receiving DLC expansions supporting their releases in the year after their initial launches. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s first expansion drops next month on September 13th.
