Since its debut in 2016, more than 1 billion people have downloaded Pokémon Go, which is significantly more than have played every previous entry in the series combined. At its peak, tens of millions of people played monthly, swarming city streets and turning Pokémon Go into the first global real-world video game. It introduced new people to the franchise, and rekindled an interest in lapsed fans.
Often, when a entertainment property reaches that kind of mainstream success, particularly with a streamlined take like Pokémon Go, fans worry about the dumbing down of their beloved games. But that’s not what happened to Pokémon: instead, Pokémon Go inspired a creative boom for the franchise, leading to some of the best, most approachable Pokémon games to date. And with yesterday’s reveal of Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch, that trend looks to continue.
Things started out fairly slowly. In the summer of 2016, when Pokémon Go mania was at its zenith, Nintendo revealed that sales of older Pokémon games on the 3DS were exploding, due largely to the increased attention brought on by the mobile AR game. A few months later, Pokémon Sun and Moon became two of Nintendo’s fastest-selling games ever. Unsurprisingly, these numbers began to have impact on the games themselves.
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In 2017, Nintendo released Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, enhanced versions of the previous 3DS games. And these games had a number of features that were specifically inspired by Pokémon Go, including a more streamlined user interface and the ability to capture stronger monsters much earlier in the game. “We knew we had a good fanbase, but of course we were surprised by the sheer number of users who came out as big Pokémon fans when Pokémon Go was released,” Sun and Moon director Shigeru Ohmori told The Verge back in 2017. “We want to draw on that excitement that’s been built up over the past year.”
Things went a step farther last year with Pokémon: Let’s Go, a game designed explicitly to combine the approachable nature of Pokémon Go with a more traditional role-playing game. It removed series and genre staples like random battles, and stripped out many other inessential elements, while adding more playful features like motion-controlled throws for capturing pokémon and the option to have your favorite monster follow you around, just like in the cartoon.
Prior to these games, the series often felt like it was in something of a holding pattern, with new entries that slightly improved on their predecessors, but also added increasingly convoluted features that seemed unnecessary. But with the inspiration of Pokémon Go, Pokémon games became more welcoming, simplifying the formula without ruining what makes it work so well in the first place. “Pokémon Go really did represent the second Pokémon boom, so to say, and it was really a rare opportunity that no one could have counted on,” long-time series director Junichi Masuda told The Verge last year.
It’s still too early to tell whether this year’s Sword and Shield will follow this trend. From yesterday’s brief, early glimpse, they appear to be much more traditional than Let’s Go. Importantly, they’re also the first mainline Pokémon games to debut on a home console. That means this will likely be the biggest and most beautiful entry in the series to date — and with that, we could see yet another Pokémon boom.
This article is from The Verge
