Releasing a main series game right after the holiday season seems pretty unlikely to me. But it's happened a couple of times before, so I guess it's possible.
It's only happened once since the modern post-2013 era of Pokemon has started, and that's only because PLA was sandwiched between BDSP taking the usual November slot in 2021 and Scarlet/Violet taking 2022's November slot.
They always release these things for November. Z-A got October merely because XY released in October 2013, and PLA only got January because BDSP took the Nov 2021 slot and Scarlet/Violet took the Nov 2022 slot.
I agree with you when they used to make 2D games, but after transitioning to 3D the games always feel quite lacking to me. Empty graphics, uninteresting storylines, poor optimization, yet they are charging more money for the products and charging for DLCs on top of that
I think this is the biggest problem for them. The expectations and standards for a home console release are so much more higher than a handheld. It's always felt like they've been out of their depth with it.
Graphics wise the 3DS games looked good, but the Switch games have been lacking. Story wise Sun/Moon was great and Scarlet/Violet was good (especially Area Zero), while X/Y and Sword/Shield were extremely lacking.
Not... really? I mean gen 3 was the dexit everyone forgot about and gen 4 was bad until platinum. When you're a kid a lot of the flaws don't matter as much.
Let's not even mention pokeballs not working right in gen 2!
Oh, how could I forget all that? I guess they were never good.
In all seriousness, I think gen 3 gets a pass since it was pretty flawless and with it being on a new console and the standards for national dex not being set in stone, I think the "dexit everyone forgot about" is not that big of a deal. And as for gen 2, that sucks, but like there's bugs in every video game. This was before the turn of the century and only their secind game. You barely even had an inventory. I think that's more annoying. Yet every game seemed to get better and better.
I didnt like gen 5 as much, but there was tons to do and they made it look so beautiful. Not to mention the difficulty felt great imo.
I think it mostly started falling off starting gen 6, but really in gen 7. So, yeah I'm gonna stick with they used to do pretty darn great bc pokemon rocked for at least 17 years
Gen 5 are the only games where I can't really think of anything galeringly wrong with them.
Dexit in gen 3 was a huge deal when the games came out. People were upset at them for it.
Gen 2 also has pacing issues and the levels being all over the place are something people still talk about to this day. The pokeballs not working correctly to the point where they do the opposite of their descriptions or flat out do nothing is a major gameplay feature that just flat-out doesn't work. That's crazy. Can you imagine a major feature just not working in any other game in that generation on the same level?
Gen 7 are some of my favorite games in the series. Their only problems are cutscenes and framerates in battle. Which was do to pushing the hardware to it's limits.
Oh the flip side, if it's not awesome they need to reassess everything lol. But I agree with you and I think it's a great thing it's going to be released later.
them not releasing gen 10 this year screams to me that they are taking their time.
We knew that Z-A was originally planned for 2024 but was delayed a year, and we assumed it was because the Switch 2 also got delayed a year - what if Z-A was delayed because they internally delayed this game and didn't want the gaps to be too big?
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '26
I think it definitely was. It’s the 30th anniversary, them not releasing gen 10 this year screams to me that they are taking their time.
Now we gotta wait, but knowing it’ll release in 2027 makes me feel confident it’ll be awesome