*slowly digests block of text for a few minutes*
Well.....first off, the console market is not the mobile market. We've been through this whole song and dance before, so many times, with multiple developers who are convinced that mobile gaming will be the death of console gaming, and whilst there is no denying that Pokemon Go is raking in a stupid amount of money, so is the Nintendo Switch. Game Freak also drive the Pokemon franchise forward, so cutting them off would be a very, VERY bad move. There may be less of a priority in developing the console games (which is heavily implied by Game Freak, but I'll get to that in a minute) because the mobile market is cheap and easy to develop for and rakes in SUBSTANTIALLY more, but I don't think that is any indicator that they will stop making console titles...I mean, Pokemon is one of Nintendo's biggest franchises. Declining sales each generation or not, they'd be absolutely insane to make Pokemon a mobile-only franchise.
Game Freak are the problem here I think, not TPC. All the problems and issues people have with SnS stem from Game Freak, and I think that is due to the nature of their kind of developer they are and the people in charge, rather than TPC's attitude towards them in general. Making sense out of the interviews about this game is actually quite difficult, because there are so many contradictions and outright lies in them, as well as deliberately inflammatory statements about how they have "no regret" over cutting out the National Dex, which is totally unnecessary and seems designed to anatagonise fans and generate awareness of the games in the lack of tangible reveals, which is APPARENTLY intentional but you'll notice that this only came in the wake of Dexit being revealed so yeah hahahaha no not buying it, less reveals means less for angry people to criticise. We've already had lies about models completely disproven, so yeah. If not for that we probably would have had a demo on the eShop by now, going by past patterns. Since Dexit people have looked for any excuse to tear these games apart - and I don't blame them; for such a sacrifice to be made you would expect there to be other features to make up for it, and everything GF has highlighted has been ripped to shreds - and they don't want to give them excuses until the game is actually out on the shelves and making a profit, which is fair enough. But the PR campaign has been an absolute shambles, and figuring out just WHY things have gone the way they have gone is extremely difficult...which is probably intentional, because I don't think Game Freak was expecting this level of backlash over Dexit. They probably thought they could just justify it with whatever came to hand, but they've tried to explain it in multiple ways, to the point where now they've just used the "it's a creative decision and we have no regrets" line now because nothing is going to justify it in the eyes of angry fans.
I mean, 1000 staff to work on the games sounds impressive, but it really isn't for a game that should have a AAA budget...and Masuda stated that he likes to keep the core team under 200 people. Sure, communication is key, but for a game this size when it has to be brought out to tie in and promote new merchandise and anime...that is a really bad, really stupid move. There is NO WAY you're going to get the best quality title working to such a strict deadline without crunch, which is something that Nintendo rightfully shuns as bad practice. I mean, Game Freak staff are even rotated between the two development teams so that they don't burn out making Pokemon titles! So the reality is that likely less people are working on the games than you might think. Game Freak's development process is notoriously bad, too...I mean, Sun and Moon had multiple identical models of Lillie for the different islands in the game code. This general stupidity goes aaaaaall the way back to Gold/Silver, with the only reason Kanto even being in those games was because of Iwata stepping in to help out. Because of things like this it really casts into doubt that SnS needed to be as big as they are, or would be that big if they were done by any developer with half a bloody clue. I am really looking forward to these games being released, if only because I want to see exactly WHAT people find when they tear them down and get into the coding. It wouldn't surprise me if models for every Pokemon WERE actually in the game, just locked away, and if we had some thoroughly stupid things in there like duplication of assets bloating the filesize. I'm not a tech expert so I'm not going to try and go into detail, but even I understand that these things aren't necessary.
Then you read about things like how
they spent half a year fussing over the tall grass and just...what. Poor time management on top of Masuda exerting a strangehold on the size of the dev team, not taking full advantage of TPC's resources by hiring enough staff to get the job done, AND having to work with a deadline? The deadline alone would likely put crunch on any other dev team to get everything in; even with a crunch I doubt Game Freak could. There isn't enough time or resources to get the job done. They can preach about it being a "creative decision" all they want, but it clearly isn't. Timing is another factor, too. Metroid Prime 4, back to square one. Animal Crossing delayed to 2020. Nintendo's share prices took a hit after those announcements. Let's say for a minute that Game Freak could ignore the merch and anime, they still couldn't delay the games, because Nintendo wouldn't have a major release coming out in time for Christmas. Nintendo's general policy about "a delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad" doesn't apply when there is profit to be made in the holiday season, and there is nothing else that can fill the gaps. Pokemon is a well-established and long-standing franchise, so it can take a hit to quality and still sell more than enough to make a profit. By all means, rush the games and throw them out there at the right time. It's cynical, but it's business.
The latest interview about how we might not get a new Pokemon game every year implies that they're taking feedback on board, though. SnS need to be released to tie in with the anime and merchandise. The next games will not need to be, and they will have a solid foundation for working on the Switch. It wouldn't surprise me if the next new Pokemon titles are the ones that actually have all the content they should have in them. How soon we get them will depend on the sales numbers, probably. I mean, this is what Masuda said in a recent interview regarding Game Freak's schedule for releasing new Pokemon titles:
"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.
Yes, we've had a new Pokemon game pretty much every year this last decade or so, but this is the first Pokemon title on Switch, and it starts a new generation. I think that Game Freak just didn't have the time or the resources to create what they wanted to with SnS, so they cut corners. They'll have more time with the next titles, so it wouldn't surprise me if they are of a much higher quality and take longer to release because of it. Because they're not deaf to fan criticism - if they were they wouldn't keep trying to placate them with interviews that skirt around the issue but never quite address it in the same way that they did right at the start, with the long-winded vague apology that basically amounted to "tough shit, this is how it's gonna be, please buy the games and play Pokemon Home, thanks"
But let's not kid ourselves: these games are going to sell millions and get positive review scores across the board, because it's Pokemon. Whether or not the sales numbers meet TPC's expectations is another matter, but there is no way that any amount of complaining done on the internet is going to affect the sales of these games in such a way that Game Freak will have their position jeopardised. But I do think that they will think very carefully about how they will plan the next games because of that complaining. People might be sick of it, and it might not change the current situation, but I think it'll have ramifications for the future, because honestly I can't remember anything that has divided a fandom quite this badly before.
In no way will these games be a failure, though. Well, not from a business standpoint. On a personal level is another matter, but I don't think any Pokemon game could be said to be a failure. There has been a noticeably decline in sales across the generations and I think this trend will probably continue, but Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee had a high sales-to-install-base figure, and with the Switch Lite released recently I think we'll see a jump in the numbers...those were spinoffs, these are the first titles of a new generation, and those always do better than subsequent titles in that generation.
