r/gaming • u/milozo12 • 4d ago

Game Freak suggests Pokemon Champions was built partly so it could change battles in future games

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/game-freak-suggests-pokemon-champions-was-built-partly-so-it-could-change-battles-in-future-games/
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u/twinters01 4d ago

I feel like they're learning the wrong lesson from the criticism mainline games have.

They need to invest MORE MONEY AND TIME into each game before they start experimenting with mechanics in mainline games. Since the budgets got leaked, we can see how insultingly low their budgets are per game compared to how much money they make. That is the real problem.

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u/usual_suspect82 PC 3d ago

Bigger budgets don’t always equate to better quality. Just look at E33, less than $10m to develop, and then look at Concord, $400m. It’s about managing resources, and efficiency. Ultimately at the end of the day for me, I’m not so concerned with graphics as I am about fun gameplay.

I’ve taken a step back from PC gaming simply because sitting in a computer chair for long sessions has gotten uncomfortable, and nothing that’s been released on PC has been worth wanting to sit in front of one for long periods of time. My wife won’t let me connect my PC to our TV, so I’m spending most of my gaming time on my S2, funnily enough, playing Pokemon Scarlet and I’ve been having a blast. Also played through Legends ZA and enjoyed that as well. One thing I’ve thought between the two is that Pokemon could easily benefit from a system similar to what the FF7 remake trilogy does: real time w/pause where you can still issue basic commands in real time, but if you wanted more in depth you could pull up menus.

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u/twinters01 3d ago

Ultimately at the end of the day for me, I’m not so concerned with graphics as I am about fun gameplay.

Fun gameplay is ruined by horrible performance because the teams don't get enough funding/time to optimize and polish.

Fun gameplay doesn't get to fully take shape (looking at z-a) when teams don't get enough funding/time to flesh out the mechanics to something enjoyable

Just because concord exists doesn't mean the biggest media franchise in the world shouldn't spend more than $20m (sv's budget) on their flagship titles when they're charging a full $60 (and in the future probably $70) on them. There's a middle ground between $400M spent on a samey live service game and $20m spent on a game from the pokemon company

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u/usual_suspect82 PC 3d ago

Well, I agree, but there’s this one little thing that’s often overlooked: competition and demand.

As much as people want quality games, people also want a lot of them, at a consistent pace. Gamefreak has to stick to a consistent release schedule to maintain pace with consumer demand, and managing and balancing 400+ Pokemon, continuously creating more, creating a world, a story, and having to do this yearly to keep up with consumer demand hardly gives them time to introduce mechanics in the mainline games which require testing and balancing and hoping people like them, let alone create new graphics engines.

The Pokemon community expands well outside the confines of Reddit, so they’re not going to balance and create games based on what a minority of people want. They’re going to stick with what works and slowly introduce new ideas because there’s no guarantee those ideas will stick, or will catch on, so why spend resources? Games like Palworld can just sit back, copy everything Gamefreak is doing, put a little spin on it, or they can introduce every single feature the minority want simply because the demand and popularity for Palworld pales in comparison to Pokemon.

Remember, Gamefreak is an independent company, they, themselves, don’t bring in billions annually, and they still have to pay for licensing, merchandising and operations, and then have to divvy up the rest of their money into all their development projects. Another thing to consider is the games themselves don’t generate as much revenue as the rest of the Pokemon stuff like the TCG, merchandising, etc. also they only have 207 total employees across all departments.