Undoubtedly, The Pokemon Company is one of the most famous game developers of all time. They took a “simple RPG” focused on monster raising and battling and turned it into the biggest franchise. We’re not exaggerating on that mark, either. Counting the games, shows, movies, merchandise, and everything in between makes the franchise the highest-grossing media franchise out there. But that doesn’t mean that the team behind the franchise is perfect. We all know they’re not based on last year’s activities alone. The launch of Gen 9 wasn’t well-received, and everyone wondered what would happen next.
If you aren’t in the loop, the launch of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was highly-anticipated to the extent that it would sell over 10 million units in three days. However, the catch was that the game was riddled with bugs. Bugs in open-world titles are inevitable due to their vastness, but this was a different story. These bugs were easily spotted in key story missions and standard gameplay sections. Gamers knew that the team at Game Freak wouldn’t have allowed this if they had the time to fix them, which is why many shifted the blame to The Pokemon Company. They had the ability to say, “Let’s not rush this out,” but they didn’t do that.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, COO Takato Utsunomiya talked about how the franchise had come out at a “certain cadence” and that he and the team were “having conversations” about what to do in the future:
“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 said in the chat. “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 that’s not a direct reference to Gen 9, you can read the subtext quite well. Many gamers agree that had Game Freak been given the time to fix the bugs and issues, Gen 9 might’ve been the greatest Pokemon titles ever. Instead, they’re a “What If?” question that no one likes to think about.
Naturally, many hope the company is taking the proper steps so the upcoming DLC release won’t be as bug-ridden.
