Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are great, but the future of Pokemon games is worrying

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet reached eager fans and eager Pokemon trainers about two weeks ago. It sold 10 million copies within three days of its release, making it the fastest-selling Pokemon game of all time. That said, there’s no dispute at all about the poor state of the game when it launched, and players should be more concerned about the future of their favorite franchise.

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Pokémon is the highest-grossing franchise worldwide. With multiple TV series, tons of movies, near-annual releases of video games and trading card games – all featuring cute Pokémon – Pokemon dominate the market in nearly every country on Earth. Makes sense. As a franchise conceived in 1996, Pokemon is also one of the best games to connect generations; whether it’s a 30-year-old or a 4-year-old, I can tell you how cute Pikachu is, or Ash turns into stone. Resonates in moments of heartache. Honestly, the way this franchise brings disparate people together is magical.

I love Pokemon. I have loved Pokemon for many years. But Pokemon Crimson and Violet worry me more than any other Pokemon release in the franchise’s 26-year history. Pokemon Sword and Shield was far from being a fun time, but it did well and had a lot of love for it. Ultimately, I don’t want to click through all the existing Pokemon games, and that’s okay. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet – offering fresh, innovative gameplay in a vibrant open world running at 5fps, complete with scary pop-up graphics and Pokemon falling from the floor during battle – are quite different Happening.

It’s a huge shame and a huge disservice to fans that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are shipping in this state. Of course, Pokemon loyalists will snap up anything you gift them (myself included), and that won’t be stopping anytime soon. But does that give developers and publishers the right to release games in this state? Do not.

It’s worrisome for Game Freak and Nintendo to let underperforming games pass the QA loophole. Since the series’ conception, we’ve had the opportunity to see new mainline games every two to three years, with remakes and spinoffs added to fill out the release schedule and buy Game Freak time to make big generational jumps. Considering how poorly technical Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are (a trend that Pokemon Legends: Arceus started) leads me to believe that Game Freak can’t keep up with this demand. Not without some serious changes.

The sandwich-eating cutscene, in all its chaotic glory, makes me smile every time.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has great gameplay. Best Pokemon in years. It makes me hope that future games will be equally innovative and accessible to novices, while remaining a challenge for veterans. Adding new content keeps the heart of the series beating, but also keeping everything the red and blue kids love. But, if Game Freak’s development process doesn’t change — or Nintendo’s release schedule — I fear we’ll see more shitty games in the future. As if we haven’t witnessed enough of them in recent years.

Scarlet and Violet aren’t the only games that showed promise but underperformed; we’ve all seen Callisto Protocol’s Steam reviews plummet last week, the state of last year’s Battlefield 2042, and dare I say, Cyber the year before. Punk 2077. Pokemon is an enigma because its reputation is hardly tarnished by Scarlet and Violet’s performance issues, which is the scariest part of all of this: if Game Freak, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company think it has no effect, the game will still Continue to deliver quickly at the expense of quality? If Arceus has taught us anything, well… yes.

I’ve seen a lot of players blame the Nintendo Switch hardware for all this, and I present to you The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A visually stunning game with smooth, high-performance gameplay that runs flawlessly on the console. That was released five years ago, no less. Need more proof? How about ports of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and DOOM (2016), both of which run better on console than Pokemon Scarlet and Violet – native games! – able.

There’s no denying that the character designs and Gen 9 Pokemon look great.

I’m not calling on Pokemon fans to boycott the series; that would be unrealistic. After all, I paid for the game myself and had a great time playing it. However, I recommend that everyone be aware of the future of the series and give that same attention.If Pokemon Scarlet and Violet could be released in this very broken state, selling millions of copies, and still

With rave reviews, what incentive does Pokemon have to ensure its future games launch in better shape? What message does this send to other developers?

Nintendo did release a patch for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet last week that increased NPC FPS several times, but it didn’t introduce any huge, noticeable performance differences in my experience. The publisher did say, “We take player feedback seriously and are working hard to improve the game,” though. That’s a big deal, because Nintendo is notoriously quiet.

We hope that by taking player feedback seriously, the teams behind Pokemon games will dedicate more of their time or manpower to the development of future games in the series, rather than continuing to push bad games into the mouths of hungry Pokemon players. The community has caused enough displeasure this time around that maybe—just maybe—the next Pokemon game will learn from those mistakes, and Game Freak will do what it can to make the next entry in the venerable series Be the best…like no one ever was.