Even with the success of recent Pokémon projects, it doesn’t mean that everything is rosy over at The Pokémon Company. With Pokémon Scarlet and Violet launching to mixed reception about the technical side of things, including glitches, bugs, and other gameplay issues, there is a need for management to reflect on things, and that appears to be just what is happening.
In an interview with ComicBook.com at the Pokémon World Championships, COO Takato Utsunomiya shared that the company is more than aware of the need to prevent such quality issues in the future, starting with tweaking the release cadence.
“I think, in general, if you look at the past, the path we’ve taken up until now has been this constant release, always regularly releasing products on a fairly fixed kind of a cadence, you might say,” Utsunomiya explained.
“Always having these products able to be introduced and new experiences for our customers, and that’s how we’ve operated up until now. I think we’re still operating in that way, but there’s more and more conversations, as the development environments change, about how we can continue to do this, while making sure that we’re ensuring really quality products are also being introduced.”
In recent years, The Pokémon Company has committed to pushing out games regularly, starting with 2018’s Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go Eevee!, 2019’s Pokémon Sword and Shield, and 2022’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Quality standards have not exactly been consistent, and many worry about the conditions of the developers that are leading these projects.
Work continues on the Expansion Pass for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, with The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk set to arrive in September and Winter 2023 respectively. If there are any changes planned, they will likely only happen once these few releases are out of the way for The Pokémon Company.
Jake is a full-time trophy hunter and achievement gatherer on consoles, and part-time Steam Sale victim. He has a thing for Batman and awesome statues, and running out of space for both. Send help.
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