Game Freak says it doesn’t go out of its way to make a new Pokemon game each year
Game Freak has been known to put out Pokemon games regularly. Since the company took a break in 2015, we saw Pokemon Sun/Moon, Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu / Eevee, and now Pokemon Sword/Shield in consecutive years. Although it may seem like Pokemon is a yearly series, Game Freak says it’s not intentional.
Pokemon producer Junichi Masuda explained to VG247, “each time we go into making a new game and start a new project we look at what exactly we want to create – and then from where we decide the most appropriate timing to release it depending on various factors.” What’s important to Game Freak is to have “as many people to come in contact and play Pokemon as possible.”
Masuda’s full words:
“The first thing that’s kind of important in deciding the future direction is releasing Sword & Shield, it’s seeing the response to that. That’s an important part of where we go in the future. So it’s not necessarily that we’re looking always to release every single year, but each time we go into making a new game and start a new project we look at what exactly we want to create – and then from where we decide the most appropriate timing to release it depending on various factors.
One thing that we always want to keep in mind going forwards is that we want as many people to come in contact with and play Pokemon as possible. We’ve obviously got a lot of long-time fans who have loved the series for a long time, and we definitely want to keep making games that they love. At the same time we always want to draw in new players and make games that are accessible to them. So that’s a really important thing we consider when starting a new project.”
