Watch out for Ghosts...

133.

Yeah.....wonder if it was due to the public pushing for more variety and allowing some Pokemon back in or if Game Freak and Nintendo intended on adding a "National Dex" later down the line. But, yeah.....if they said they were going to do something then they should've stuck to it. Now it's just sort of expected now that they add most to all the Pokemon they've made so far. Soon it might come to a point where Pokemon might be the only thing on devices since the amount of Pokemon could overtake a ton of RAM or something on the devices.

134. It's always been expected that every Pokemon is coded into every game, that was the whole reason that Dexit was such a controversy in the first place. But considering the 3DS could handle the everything up to Gen VII on a single cartridge, I think we're a looooooong way from having so many Pokemon that they can't fit on physical media, especially as everything up to Gen VII has future-proofed models from the 3DS. Even if we ever did reach that point, mandatory installs are pretty commonplace in the industry these days.

135.

I see....so really the concern of it being too many pokemon would come if Nintendo and Game Freak decides to add like....3-400 new pokemon for one game right? Or would it be more that would cause the game and system to possibly freeze or glitch?

136.

Apart from the 3D models and perhaps another unique move or ability to be coded, extra Pokémon are pretty much numbers. That shouldn't cost too much data, I would guess? Not compared to the rest of the entire game at least.

From what I've heard, the newest titles were just generally unpolished due to time pressure, so big chance that could simply be the reason they scrapped a lot of Pokémon? The fact that they are later in DLC so "generously" adding so many Pokémon kinda undermines their old points, haha.

137. With the way the restrictions of physical media can be bypassed with digital installs, I can't honestly think of a scenario where "too much data" would actually be a valid reason...at a stretch, maybe if they *actually* re-did the models for every Pokemon, and had all of them with unique attack animations for moves. If everything was like the new moves in SnS, and not like the recycled Double Kick animation. Even then I'd question it, because you can fit a hell of a lot onto a 32GB cartridge...like The Witcher III.

Given Game Freak's generally inadequate programming skills, I think that perhaps getting their future-proof models across from the 3DS to the Switch was more difficult than they first thought, which might be why they weren't all included - they didn't have time.

138.

I see...well if they didn't have enough time then that is one thing. Though that makes me wonder did they intend to program the 3D models for future things and then something happened that made it hard to transfer them over? Like....did the models not compute well with the Switch and so they had to do something to make the game run smoothly and not have it all glitchy? For example, how X and Y was with Horde Battles and how quite a lot of the battles were extremely laggy due to the sprites and all that.

139. Masuda didn't plan on adding in everything at the very least.

The entire thing is a mess tbh. Game Freak would have been better served by not responding to the backlash at all, and the announcement shouldn't have been made as an offhand comment in a Nintendo Treehouse. If they had taken great care in how they had presented it I doubt the internet would have exploded the way it did...at least, not in quite the same fashion.

140

Yeah.....but honestly it was either not respond to it and people talk badly about it or address it and get Pokemon on people's minds and being talked a lot. So...really it is, when they did they should've taken into consideration of how to approach it best.

141. Well, of course they needed to reveal it, but it should have been done in a separate announcement, and that should have been it I think. The backlash should have been met with silence, because really there wasn't anything that they COULD say that wouldn't inflame the situation further. Silence is better than outright lies, which is what they ended up giving us. Every time they approached the matter, the hole got even deeper, and it really didn't need to get any deeper than what it was. I think perhaps Masuda underestimated just how upset this was going to make people. I realise that anything associated with Nintendo can generally get away with murder, but there are definitely limits, and with Dexit I think they found one.

142. Not sure about all this since I didn't follow that many SwSh news to begin with but... if you keep creating new generations of pokémon, then... there's only going to be so many you can add inside a single cartridge! Sure, you could try and work around this with an online cloud server or something, but that would also be very hard to manage - not to mention that all the new mechanics and games getting better from a graphic standpoint only mean more and more data to be stored just to make a single game work! So yeah... idk anymore :rowlhmph:

143. Well, SnS are about 11GB in size IIRC, and Switch cartridges can go up to 32GB at the moment, although there is a buzz about 64GB cartridges and the only reason those haven't been employed as of yet IIRC is the cost of the things...and if next gen gaming is going to see a price shift the way it looks to be, the excuse to not use 64GB cartridges is going to go out the window, as they'll just charge next gen prices. So 64GB cartridges isn't out of the question for future Pokemon titles, because it's a Nintendo flagship series, a major system seller, and the largest media franchise in the world, so they're not hurting for money or for people who will pay next gen prices for the games. SM were 3.2GB in size and had every Pokemon on them, and bear in mind here that the models are exactly the same in both games, so visual upgrade aside, it's unlikely that they're that much bigger in all probability. I've not seen the numbers, but I'd be surprised if they were based on this.

A Switch cartridge can hold the base game and the DLC as that's coming out in November, so clearly the base games weren't desperate for space if they could manage this. Game installs also go directly onto the console's internal memory or SD card, they're not on a cloud server or anything - think of it like downloading a digital game. This is a pretty common practice in the industry these days where the filesizes are too big for the disc/cartridge to handle, where they want to add additional content or DLC, etc. Game Freak have actually already done this by including Pokemon from the DLC in a free patch. Moving forward...well, most games require Day 1 Patches these days. So if you buy physical, you have to patch the game before you can play it, and if you buy digital, you download the patch with the rest of the game. Either way, the elements that couldn't be squeezed onto the cartridge make it into the game for both versions of it. There's no reason they can't do this with Pokemon left out if they leave any out - they've already set a precedent this generation by doing it with the SnS DLC.

So no matter which way you look at it, the "they take up too much space" argument really doesn't hold up, because it's very easy to circumvent it.

144.

If it's 11 GB for half the Pokémon along with the entire region, move data, trainer data, dialogue etc etc, there is no way those extra Pokémon could bump the size to anywhere near that 32 GB.
It's crazy how the much older Colosseum games did actually have some super cool unique animations (as demonstrated in this article), so it's not like cool animations aren't doable. They just... didn't do it. :(

145. Stadium was developed and published by Nintendo and HAL, and Genius Sorority did the Colosseum titles, so it's not surprising they're of a higher quality. The former especially, because Nintendo, for all their flaws, generally will always put 100% into whatever they're working on. Even for their bad games, you can't fault them for effort. But Game Freak's programming abilities are notoriously awful (Iwata had to step in to get Kanto in the Johto titles because they had no idea how to do it, and there are multiple copies of Lillie on each island in SM for no good reason) so it's not surprising that the ability to make decent animation outside of some very rare cases is utterly beyond them. Really, if we're going to get a proper console title Pokemon experience, Game Freak need to either learn how to outsource, or pass development to someone who actually knows what they're doing.

146
I'm no expert but it looks like it, GF is not really able to handle Pokémon as a whole franchise anymore, are they? :)

147. It doesn't seem like it, no. xD

But then who knows! Game Freak seem to need a game to adjust to developing on a new system - compared the production quality of Gen VI to Gen VII in particular. Even if you don't like the games, there is no denying they're more technically impressive. With the next games on Switch they might be able to make something that is at least passable, rather than...whatever SnS is supposed to be.

148

Fair, after all Black and White were really amazing, especially for what they could accomplish on a Nintendo DS! But that still means, GF should either slow down a bit with making new games or get more people on board to adapt more quickly, right?

149

I'd say both, really. Annual releases (which apparently wasn't intentional, but is what we had for the longest time) require either a lot of cut corners or crunch, and neither of those things is really acceptable. I think with the advent of DLC we'll see a slowing down of their release schedule, but the downside to that is that what should have been in the games will be cut out and sold back as DLC if there isn't enough time to add it in...or if whoever is in charge decides to be greedy. Either way, Game Freak's work ethic is almost as bad as their business model and could stand to change to be more like Nintendo's, i.e. a delayed game will eventually be good, but a rushed game will always be bad.

I also think Masuda should never be allowed to give interviews again, but that's just me. xD

150

Haven't watched that many Masuda interviews but... yeah, definitely looks like it! :rowlhmph:

151

I really wish Pokemon had the luxury of taking their time like other Nintendo games such as Zelda and Animal Crossing but it would seem they can't.

152

Unfortunately, the days when the franchise was driven by the games are loooong over. It's driven by merchandise these days, which moves to a different timetable. The games are a meagre 10% of the total revenue...and as sales were steadily dropping with each successive generation, it's none too surprising they were given a short straw with SnS.

Eleanor said:

Haven't watched that many Masuda interviews but... yeah, definitely looks like it! :rowlhmph:

Click to expand...

The only Masuda interview I've seen is that disastrous one where he just dropped the Dexit bombshell after a Treehouse of all things, I was thinking more of the awful interviews afterwards, which only poured more fuel on the fire. That last one in particular...oh boy. It's no wonder people are/were fuming.
Someone just needs to staple that man's mouth shut. Or better yet, fire him and let someone who understands how game development works step up and take charge. xD