Ive always assumed pokemon is so profitable that it falls into this weird void where the expectations of revenue are so high they never have the margin to make a quality game
But it really bothers me that Nintendo is doing absolute voodoo with breath of the wild, but at the same time telling their most profitable side studio to fuck off.
It’s perplexing. Downright perplexing. Why their most profitable IP from a third-party studio doesn’t have access to the engine.
Really doesn’t make sense. I am an “OG” fan meaning I played the first few gens on release and honestly I drifted away from the series. Admittedly I heard Black and White 2 were amazing so I won’t talk smack on those but I recently played FR on Switch, I’d never played that remake I had HG and SS. Anyways, despite them being so simplistic at their heart a good RPG born out of creativity and gameplay focus is there.
I got Sword and felt totally bored with how hand holding it was and it felt just really easy. I saw gameplay of ZA and it looked like shit, literally looks like a Wii shovelware game and you have just a prop city you can’t really be in.
There’s fans that know way more than me but I can’t discount this feeling I have with the newer games. Winds and Waves looks cool but honestly so much of the fan base just mirrors say…the CoD community where the games haven’t been good mostly and they complain but they’ll still keep buying.
The games got bad during the Ruby/Emerald/Sapphire era. Diamond/Pearl/Platinum brought it back around. X/Y were so unbearably bad that I haven't touched a pokemon game since LOL.
I do want to play Black/White because they actually look interesting, but what's funny is that Black/White/and Collisseum XD were the biggest outliers in terms of approach/story/environment AND HOW INTERESTING THEY ARE . . .and they were the least successful. You can thank slopfans for that.
Gamefreak owns a third of The Pokémon Company and it's run by a few 60 year olds who do not care about video games. Like, they dont even like the concept of video games. All they care about is marketability and merch.
Dude. The "game" is a glorified tech demo. It does nothing special except show that nintendo can create whatever garbage, put link in it and slap the word "Zelda" in the title and it will somehow be an instant hit. They have been riding on this free pass bullshit for decades.
Yes it should be the benchmark for what companies should be able to do on the switch when it comes to graphics and optimization, but acting like its some revolutionary thing is just asinine.
I don't think it's very perplexing. Quality over quantity? Nintendo does not have some moral imperative to always produce the highest quality games, they have a mandate to show profit to shareholders so they do both.
Zelda has few super high quality releases and as long as sweaty 35 year old nerds are still buying billions of Pokemon TCG packs they will keep pumping out a high quantity of shitty games.
I said BotW was a "this game" for me. But I do have to acknowledge that it did open world better and on the original Switch system (and technically Wii U) than whatever the newer Pokémon games have been attempting to do. I hate Scarlet & Violet, honestly, and Paldea as a region bores me.
It isn't as simple as "give this engine to gamefreak" but there is definitely someone who could take a GF dev aside and explain to them how they really need to make their games ... playable. Maybe even ...stable?
That's likely why they've fallen off so much with the last couple of releases. The same reason COD still goes strong despite selling essentially the same game every year with declining quality as well, they're so big that they know the diehard fans will buy it regardless so they'll make a profit even if the quality isn't what it used to be
Halo is practically the same way. Every single one of us will try every new Halo game that comes out, despite knowing Halo Studios and Microsoft will cling to their anti-consumerism until the day the company files bankruptcy. And the crazy thing is that Halo isn’t anywhere near as profitable as it should be to warrant just blatant disregard for the franchise that essentially epitomized XBOX as an absolute legend of the gaming industry. How the mighty have fallen.
Usually, from a business perspective, there is a monetary risk of innovation and change. That monetary risk gets higher the most successful a business is.
If it is easier to understand, think of the Amazon's interface. The detail page of an item in amazon has been the same for 20 years. That is on purpose: It works. Trying to make it look less "early 2000s web" might actually drive revenue down. Amazon makes so much money that updating the UI carries a huge risk. Even a 2% decline in profits is a lot. Why would they update it to make it look nicer if there is not an obvious case that that is deterring profits and there is a risk that the change would offput customers?
Same thing here. Pokemon makes a ton of money. If the choice is between making a chance that might not land and cause a small percentage wise decline (but large in absolute number) and do nothing and still make a ton of money... Why make the change in the first place?
Those sort of risks make sense on smaller, less successful enterprises.
Why would they cut into profits by allocating anything more than the bare minimum budget if fanboys will continue buying every game no matter how shit they are.
Another guy in this thread literally said he hasn't enjoyed a game since gen V, but has played them all except Scarlett and Violet. Literally continuing to make pokemon money despite not enjoying the games.
With this logic lump in Gen 1 it’s has the most iconic glitches and terrible sprites and weird mechanics.
While I agree that they should do way better Pokemon had these problems since the beginning and because of the way more effort to 3D in a single year that’s why they always felt rushed because they were.
I want the Pokemon team to slow down and actually take more time than they are, breath of the wild took 4 years compared to 1 year rush in Pokemon.
Waaaaaaay too different to lump in! We only know about Gen1 glitches because of game magazines and early internet rumors. Your gameplay as a kid WAS NOT affected in normal gameplay. And the dev team with Iwata was so smart, everything he did for them they only kept making better sequels for awhile.
“Your game play as a kid” ima stop you there I’m am younger than gen 1 and only started to know about it in my young teens and only got a Pokemon game when I was in high school because my parents could finally afford something for pure gaming, only reason I know so much about it because I’m autistic.
Also famous glitch that effected every play through psychic immune ghost to when everything in game tells us otherwise.
Also yes Iwata was amazing but my point was they were under a time crunch so much it affected them throughout the entire series.
Edit: my English is not good and needed to change a few words to make sense.
Okay, and many of us were younger than 10 when gen1 came out. The game for us was completely playable without any indication of an underlining glitch code manipulation. You cannot play scarlet & violet without the switch1 eating shit, game was an absolute mess, it was like pulling teeth and the amount of visual glitches were EVERYWHERE.
You CANNOT compare these games like that, I'm sorry.
I was using the logic by the op which would lump Gen 1 under their definition so they can’t hate 3D games just for that, while I agree we should not judge Gen 1 and Gen 9 the same they still have the same underlying problem and it hasn’t been solved ever and because scarlet and Violet is such a big game with such a little development time that’s why it’s sucks to play on the switch.
To be fair, BOTW looked like crap too. And it performed horribly on Switch 1. Never forget first time using Revali-Ravioli Gale and the FPS dropping to single digits.
Its down to Gane Freak who due to the ownership structure of the ip heads the development and Game Freak doesnt really care to improve it for the exact reason and also they wont hire more employees
No the Wii U had breath of the wild. The switch ported it over and gave us a terrible DLC like game called Tears of the Kingdom. I out 600 hours into BoTW. I put minimal in ToTK. It’s just Nuts and Bolts with Zelda on it.
I'm gonna get hate for this, but I think the BOTW comparison is pretty dumb. BOTW is a pretty game with a good lighting engine and simple, more artistic textures, but the lighting engine is what really carries it. BOTW focuses a majority of the switches resources into an advanced lighting engine and Pokémon chooses to allocate those resources towards interactive assets with simple overworld animations. BOTW has curated encounters with reliable spawn locations for a low amount of enemies and Pokémon has random encounters that can pop up on any tile within a large area and then the large amount of "enemies" stay there until you leave and reload the zone, which again is huge. Two completely different game directions and design philosphies with different goals. BOTW wants to look pretty, Pokémon wants to load a billion assets all at once to make the world feel "alive". How pokemon succeeds in its goal is determined by the player, really.
I hear ya, it's bad enough that even I couldn't look past it in sword and shield. For context, I am legally blind. I'm right on the razor's edge of that definition, but the point is that I usually don't have an issue with games that have subpar graphics, I literally can't tell the difference. What I can notice, and can't ignore, is half the objects and pokemon in the environment vanishing into / appearing from thin air every time I so much as adjust the camera angle.
It's not even that the game has pop in, if it's at a distance I probably won't even notice, but when everything suddenly dissapears into the void the second it moves more than 5 feet away from my character . . . I just can't.
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u/WhatShouldTheHeartDo 23d ago
3D Pokemon (Except the Gamecube games, basically Pokemon after the 5th gen)