What now? Pokemon do not deserve better, because it sells anyway. Hindsight is always 2020

Last year a new Pokémon Game hit the market, Sword and Shield.

Disclaimer: This post was written in February 2020, but mistakenly not published until June.

There was, let's call it now controversy, because the game was 50% more expensive than past Pokemon games, did only include half of the existing Pokemon and did not really add anything other than some gimmicks.

Long time fans were enraged and suggested a boycott. (You can read my post, punch drunk on optimism, here).
That boycott failed. Epically, and maybe forseeably. Sword and Shield is one of the best selling Pokemon Games and one of the best selling Switch games.

To add insult to injury, shortly after the failure become apparent, Game Freak announced DLC - a first for the series. The DLC will include 2 more areas and new and many old Pokemon, and those will be available even to those who not have the DLC.

Jim Sterling has a video on gamers boycotts, and how they all failed, arguing that boycotts create buzz and most consumer succumb to the sirensong of consumerism after all, because that is what capitalism is about.
He also mentions the case of Star Wars Battlefronts II, which had loot boxes. However, people did not primarly threatened with a boycott, put complained about the loot boxes (and the progress) so long and effectively, that Disney interfered and some legislators started to put restrictions on predatory gambling mechanics in video games.

It is worth mentioning, that there was a lot of confusing communication from Gamefreak and Nintendo. I have not dived enough into it, and I do not know Japanese, so I have no idea, if this was just bad (or brillant?) marketing, mistranslations and misunderstandigs, bad cosumer relations or simply lying.
What baffles me most is, that they first said there will be no changes to Dexit (and at least implicitly, no Pokemon will be added later to this game), when they most likely already started to work on the DLC and had at least Switch models for alle Gen 1 Pokemon.

What now?

Sword/Shield sells well and has at least acceptable reviews. Like the game itself most reviews are rehashes of the past, telling us how great the journey with our Pokemon is, like the last x times.

Dexit will be partly reversed. The exact number of returning Pokemons is not yet known, but it can be expected, that at least 3/4 of all Pokemon will be included, when the games are complete by the end of 2020.
Theoretically, they could use the half a year and include the other missing Pokemon as well, but at this point I see no reason economically for them to do so.

The DLC will boost sales again.

Whatever Pokemon deserve, consumers as a whole are content with the way they are and have been for literally decades. They will not become much better in the foreseeable future, and if they do, there will be considerable trade-offs.

It also was a bubble problem:
If 30 000 people on Reddit like a topic about why we should not buy Sword/Shield, these numbers mean nothing when millions of people will do buy it.

Pokemon Home will launch soon and - surprise, surprise - it will be much more expensive than Pokemon Bank was. There will be a mostly useless free version, though.

Is this not merely a pricing problem?

It can be seen that way.
If Sword/Shield had been 30€, I would have argued, the content delivered is fair for the price. If it had been 40€, I would have probably bought it, played with my kids and did not talk a lot about it.
90€ with the DLC is clearly too much.

But this is similar with other games. I enjoyed Let's Go Evee, because it delivered what was promised, but it was clearly overprized.
I have not bought the remake of Link's Awakening, because I find 60€ for a game with the content of an already remade Gameboy game, which did cost maximum of 35€ when it was released, too much. (Yeah, I know, graphics are completely new.)

I tried the demo of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and it did not convince me. Many told me, the game becomes really great, but I am not sure, if the price tag is justified.

And what about this rando's personal and completely useless boycott?

90 € for that content is still too expensive for me.
For now, I have Yokai Watch and SMT: Strange Journey to finish, and the recent Digimon game is still much cheaper.
If somewhen Sword/Shield with DLC will be available for 45€, I will buy it.
I have not made up my mind about Mystery Dungeon.

However, I might get more Pokemon Amiibos, if I find them cheap.

And I would still buy a Let's Go Snubbul game .

But yes, I would like to keep playing Pokémon games, with my kids, but I would prefer to not be overcharged.

After the Pokemon-Controversy, shall I cancel my preorder? - YES!

edit: This controversy is already over - you can ignore older posts and just read the most recent one.


The new Pokémon Game is disappointing long-time fans of the series and the makers could not care less (for a quick summary see here), and YES, you should cancel your preorder. Why didn't you already?

But ask yourself, why do you even pre-order?

You buy something, which quality you can not yet judge, but pay full price.
Obviously you do not believe in capitalism, because for capitalism requires both parties to be informed.

Games are not scarce at launch anymore, because you can get everything via download now.
"Special editions" are usually overpriced and add nothing of worth.

There is no advantage for you, as a consumer, for preordering.

And if you want support Indiegames and small studios, use crowdfunding.

#pokemondeservebetter - and we consumers deserve better as well

edit: This controversy is already over - you can ignore older posts and just read the most recent one. 

Just a quick recap:
2 new Pokemon Games, titled Sword and Shield will be launching later this year on Nintendo Switch.
A presentation of the game so far at E3 was disappointing at best:
The game does not look much better than previous entries an the 3DS (eg here), the Pokémon animations look bland, all in all there was no kind of progress or improvement recognizable. The straw, that broke the Camerupts back was, that the game will not include all Pokémon - you cannot transfer many Pokémon. It is unclear, how many are affected, but it will be clearly a considerable number.

The outcry in the interwebs was impressive, and Gamefreak, the company that makes this game (and owns part of the IP) even responded, but as the game appears to be it was uninspired and not very helpful, basically saying "Thanks for your feedback, cut Pokémon might appear eventually in future games, and we will not change anything".

Many have summed up the problems quite eloquently (eg this Reddit-post), and I will only repeat some parts of it:

They obviously do not care about making a great game. They just put some new "flavor-of-the-month"-gimmick into it (Dynamaxing in this case), which they will drop at the next convenience. And a bunch of new Pokemon they can market.
Besides that, they recycle everything and without any effort to improve it.
And it has been like that for several generations. That might be tolearable for portable games for some time - each game costs like 35 €. But now they want 60 € on the Switch.

They blatantly overcharged for Pokémon Let's Go, especially the Pokéball-Controller (which likely will not be usuable for this game). I confess, I paid almost 90€ for both (already a discount!), and I liked it but even then I wanted improvements for a sequel,

Some people have defended them, again I will just pick a few arguments (but the others are not more convincing).

- There are so many Pokémon, eventually there will be too many.
Maybe. But not yet and not soon. (The repeated mistake is adding too many new Pokémon instead using the many that they have already, so they should limit themselves to about 50 per generation.) There is no reason to start culling Pokémon now or in the technically foreseeable future (see here for details).

- But they will be good games.
I suppose so, because they will be more or less the same as before. But not more, not better, not great, and they do not even try to be. Good games, we have played already several times. Good games, for which we paid at most 40€. Now they want to sell us a good game with slightly improved 3DS graphics for 60€.

- It is their IP. They can do, what they want. You are entitled.
 They can do with their IP, what they want. Disney was allowed to ruin Star Wars, Marvel was allowed to ruin their comics (at least for me they did), and EA was allowed to ruin many IPs and studios.
They are allowed to ruin Pokèmon with low effort, overpriced releases and mobile releases which rely on gambling mechanics.
But they actually want something from me and many people like me - cold, hard cash.

Why do the producers of the Pokémon games do not care? - Because it will sell anyway.

This is capitalism. They want to sell us something. They should give us our money's worth.
But they do not

What now?
Do you want great Pokémon games?

Then vote with your wallet!

- cancel your preorder and do not buy the games
- convince people you know, to not buy overpriced games for their kids (unless they are really rich)
- do not spend money on gambling mechanics in games (not only Pokémon, but especially there)



I for my part will further
- do not buy any Pokémon-Amiibos anymore
- do not buy Pokémon-themed cloth or toys for my kids
- continue to not watch Anime or the movies in the cinema or spend money otherwise on Pokémon stuff.

Luckily there are many other, great games out there.
I for my part always enjoyed the Shin Megami Tensei Series and will try Yokai Watch and Fossil Frontier (they cost like 10€ each) and maybe even Digimon.

Nintendo, Gamefreak and The Pokémon Company can easily fix this - Pokémon makes absurd amounts of money.