As if you could believe it, Pokémon ultimately ended up being the central focus of one of 2019’s biggest video game controversies.
The franchise, which has largely escaped major criticism for more than two decades, came under intense scrutiny last year for what many believed to be a betrayal. More specifically, Game Freak’s removal of the National Dex – a feature that allows players to obtain all 800+ Pokémon in a single game – for Switch exclusives Sword and Shield caused the internet to go into complete meltdown following the announcement at E3.
Thanks to data miners cracking early copies of the pair in the weeks leading up to launch, the debacle took an ugly turn for the worse, with many fans accusing Game Freak of outright lying about its reasons for the feature’s removal. Several months on, however, the dust has settled and despite the controversy, Sword and Shield have smashed several sales records for both the developer and publisher Nintendo.
Now, it seems that the former is ready to discuss the series’ future.
Confirmed earlier today by the Big N itself, the first Pokémon Direct of 2020 is due to air later this week, January 9th and will, according to the description, provide “roughly 20 minutes of new Pokémon information.”
As for what that entails is anyone’s guess, but it seems far too soon for the studio to be announcing the oft-rumored Diamond and Pearl remakes. Pokémon games have historically never been big on delivering additional content as DLC, either, so perhaps this particular presentation is intended to make a surprise announcement? The return of a National Dex, maybe? We’ll ultimately have to wait and see, but we’ll be compiling all of the announcements as and when they break, so stay tuned.