Last year’s Pokémon Scarlet & Violet had an almost contradictory release – breaking sales records for the series and generally regarded as good if not great games while also being raked across the coals for a litany of bugs and technical failures. This in addition to Pokémon Legends Arceus (released the same year) has prompted a lot of chatter from about slowing down the relentless release schedule of new games. Well The Pokémon Company COO Takato Utsunomiya has addressed this idea in a group interview at Pokémon World Championships 2023, in response to a question from Comicbook.
“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 responded 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.”
It’s a long, meandering, and somewhat vague answer, but we can glean that the company is prioritizing keeping its current workflow and pace while putting quality as a secondary concern. We’ll have to see if anything comes of these conversations, but without a significant change in management (whether that be in style, structure, or leadership), we’re likely to see a similar situation repeat itself again and again.
Leave a Comment
Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
