Well, this is a bit out of the blue! Three companies that are heavily invested in Pokémon in different ways – Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures Inc. – have trademarked a new term in Japanese: ウルトラシャイニー, or “Ultra Shiny.”
You might think that means we’ll be getting incredibly shiny versions of Pokémon in the upcoming Pokémon Switch, but, as Serebii points out, the Japanese games call shiny Pokémon “Different Color”.
We can only speculate for now as to what this could mean, as the trademark broadly covers the possibility for games, trading cards, TV shows and more, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before it’s cleared up. We’ll bring you the news as it breaks.