Hopefully Nintendo/The Pokemon Company will see how well Palworld is doing and stop putting out disappointing mainline Pokemon games.
Scarlet and Violet sold 10 million copies during the launch weekend, so I think they’ll be pretty content to keep churning out mediocre games at a much faster pace.
Yeah but this is a literal nobody coming into the market and pulling almost half the sales numbers as the single biggest franchise in the world with near 30 years’ worth of brand recognition. That’s still got to be somewhat of a wakeup call.
Yeah it makes me sad to think about that - people are going to keep buying the games regardless of how bad they get.
Every Pokémon is someone’s first. I bet about up to half of each iterations sales are completely new customers. And then another big chunk being a group where it’s their second or third.
Plus, it’s far from my “second or third” and I still enjoy them. Pokemon games are what they are, and I like them.
I’m not saying they couldn’t be improved, but I don’t pass on a game just because it doesn’t max out its potential. I buy fun games, and no game is perfect.
Palworld is basically what I wanted Pokemon Legends: Arceus to be (minus the guns, obviously). The game has issues, which I mostly chalk up to early access woes, but it’s a great case study in how to do an open world creature collector game.
Yup. Nintendo spends so much time making sure every Mario or Zelda game that comes out is arguably perfect. You can rely on those games being fun, polished and modern. It’s about time someone reminds them that, hey, maybe they should actually try to keep the same standards for a Pokemon game again.
The problem as far as I understand is Nintendo doesn’t have the same degree of control over Pokemon that they have over their other IPs since they share ownership of the franchise with Game Freak and Creatures Inc. I bet they’d like to hold Pokemon to the same standards as Mario or Zelda and probably just can’t… Or maybe they just don’t really care considering how Pokemon games sell like crazy no matter how much effort is put into them.
They own 1/3rd of Pokemon, but the games are made by game freak which also has 1/3. The final 1/3 is owned by creatures Inc which is a joint venture.
Nintendo doesn’t make the games, they just publish them, game freak is responsible for the games.
IMO there are a few problems with how Pokemon is developed. First, they impose an intense release cycle with release dates that are inflexible. This is because Pokemon is a multi media experience with tons of merchandise and media that depends on the next generation coming out, and despite the games now needing a much larger scope, they have not slowed down the release cycle.
Second, they haven’t really expanded their development staff since the DS days. It’s not that they’re cheap, it’s that the director of the games prefers working with smaller teams and never adapted to building a larger team which is necessary for the bigger scope of the games.
I actually think the developers themselves are very talented as they’re still putting out games with large scopes with a ridiculous release cycle and team size. I think their issue is mis-management, not talent.
they do lots of polish on character design then its gamefreaks turn to churn out something mediocre in a 2year dev cycle
It’s almost like Nintendo had every opportunity over the last 30 years to release pokemon on pc and it’s their own fault for pretending like we still exist in an era of console exclusivity.
Go palworld go. Not interested myself but glad there’s real competition to nintendo’s bullshit now
Keep an eye on it anyway. There is a epic boatload of potential in the game just below the surface. Right now the game is good, and fun, though still only a little deep and plenty wide. A couple good choices could easily deepen that depth significantly. I honestly feel as if the current game is only a foundation to lay more on top of.
That said, I’m rather bias in my optimism.
Yup, I’d buy so many Pokemon games on PC it would make Nintendo’s head spin.
I hope this will help the devolopment of the game so that this doesn’t stay in early access forever like their previous game
I hope they don’t just pack their pencils and leave after this.
I think we are safe on that front at least, there is way too much effort put into the game for it to be a cash grab and run
Wouldn’t be the first. I mean, they already have millions in profit. I don’t know how big their team is, but at 7$M development cost they are looking at 100M+ profit.
With a quick search, seems like estimates are that the team size is currently around 40 people. This makes it sound like a more committed effort than if it was a small team.
From what I’ve read, it’s ARK but not terrible. Watched the first 20 minutes and it was more reminiscent of BOTW. When’s it swap to ARK?
That is has some base building elements, it’s a bunch of popular elements from other games put into a open world pokemon botw mold.
