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Phellps

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,801
Not going to read through the thread to see if this was mentioned previously, but they did cut it years ago. Ruby/Sapphire had a reduced dex number although the files were still there so you could hack older pokemon not included in the game to get a complete national dex or slowly trade from FireRed/LeafGreen/Colosseum (not sure if you could get all the old pokemon this way).
Yeah, that is the big difference here. It won't be possible to transfer missing pokémon to SwSh, even if you have them on Home or from a future title.
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
That's not the case. Nintendo own Pokémon, as do Game Freak and Creatures Inc.

Nintendo can't pull the plug on Game Freak. Game Freak can't take it away from Nintendo.
The IP is owned by Nintendo, Creatures, Inc., Game Freak, and The Pokemon Company.

The IP is MANAGED by The Pokemon Company, who decides the overall course of the franchise, publishes the games in Japan, makes business arrangements with development partners like DeNa and Niantic, and is more than likely responsible for the budget allotted to each new Pokemon game installment.

Nintendo and its partners specifically established this situation because they recognized that Pokemon needed to, and that they wanted, Pokemon to managed as a separate entity from Nintendo's other IPs.

So while Nintendo's opinion certainly carries weight they have no real ability to, on their own, decide the course of a Pokemon game's development, nor do they desire to.
Apparently Nintendo and Gamefreak share ownership of the actual IP. It probably wouldn't be a simple thing to rip it away from Gamefreak.
Isn't Nintendo the sole owner of the trademark? I always heard that since they had that they were the only ones with true legal veto power over anything Pokemon-related that gets released, even if TPC de facto manages the IP.
 

Toxi

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
17,547
Not going to read through the thread to see if this was mentioned previously, but they did cut it years ago. Ruby/Sapphire had a reduced dex number although the files were still there so you could hack older pokemon not included in the game to get a complete national dex or slowly trade from FireRed/LeafGreen/Colosseum (not sure if you could get all the old pokemon this way).
You could get all the old Pokémon from Firered/Leafgreen/Colosseum, but it wasn't ideal since all those came after Ruby and Sapphire.

But it happened in 2002, so there wasn't nearly as much of a furor.
 

JustinP

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,343
To be clear, what Garcia said didn't really conflict with what I said. Maintaining upwards of 1,000 pokemon is a lot of work no matter how you slice it -- even if you can reuse a lot of work (which it still looks like they are, and Garcia didn't claim otherwise afaik). Both sides seem to take from what they hear to the extremes -- they want to say it either took almost no work or it took an impossible amount of work. Making a game with upwards of 1,000 of anything is going to be a lot of work -- Pokemon games take some smart shortcuts that make it feasible to have so many (making the visuals for attacks modular so you can mix and match a limited set of animations with different particle effects, for example).

My post was mostly debunking the specific claim that they were required to remake models and animations from scratch due to the move from 3DS to Switch because they weren't compatible or whatever. It was a silly claim to begin with, considering the same models/animations were already being used on 3DS, Android and iOS phones (Go), and Switch (Let's Go) -- like I said, models and animations etc are very portable (another big example is Gran Turismo 5's PS2 models).

But I also think this whole "how much work is it" discussion is a bit of a distraction. If they plan on having multiple Pokemon games on Switch, like they usually do, then presumably they'd keep the same style from SwSh and reuse these updated assets. If the removal of the national dex was about how much work it took to update them to Switch quality, it wouldn't need to be a new policy moving forward for every Pokemon game -- it could just be a temporary hiccup starting with SwSh, then each subsequent game adds more until all the pokemon are updated and the national dex gets to come back after a temporary absence while they caught up.

But they've said this is a new policy and have implied that each game will have a limited selection of pokemon -- if it's a new policy moving forward, then presumably the games after SwSh will be missing pokemon that are in SwSh even though the assets are already updated to Switch quality. So unless it's actually not a new policy moving forward and all this drama is over a miscommunication, the main reason for this policy is probably not updating art assets.

(edit: built into this is my impression that they don't plan to permanently, at least for a hardware generation, retire any pokemon -- but that could be a possibility, especially in the far future)
 
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Horohorohoro

Member
Jan 28, 2019
6,723
Being upset isn't the same thing as thinking this issue was born because of GameFreak's incompetence or that it could have easily been avoided like most people are trying to say.
No???

I'm saying that at certain points this stuff stops being subjective. I had to learn the hard way in these threads to sit down and listen to the professionals when they're talking, and the same holds true here. THis whole thread is based on the notion that people know what they're talking about have said that Game Freak's position has some basis. That's at least worth some consideration.
I'm pretty sure people are more mad for the state of the franchise from this point onward, as has been said before, over any sort of anger at Sword and Shield. If they said that this game wouldn't have every Pokemon but eventually there would be another game that did have one, it'd be fine. If they'd revealed this in a Direct or at their presentation, rather than during Treehouse, people would be a bit more understanding. They made this announcement in the most wrong way possible, and it's baffling to a lot of people that they're saying that there won't be a game with every Pokemon in it ever again even when they have every Pokemon's models and assets updated for the Switch.
 

Serebii

Serebii.net Webmaster
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
13,118
Isn't Nintendo the sole owner of the trademark? I always heard that since they had that they were the only ones with true legal veto power over anything Pokemon-related that gets released, even if TPC de facto manages the IP.
Nintendo share ownership of the trademarks domestically between them, Creatures and Game Freak but own the majority of the international trademarks alone
 

Lothars

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,765
I'm pretty sure people are more mad for the state of the franchise from this point onward, as has been said before, over any sort of anger at Sword and Shield. If they said that this game wouldn't have every Pokemon but eventually there would be another game that did have one, it'd be fine. If they'd revealed this in a Direct or at their presentation, rather than during Treehouse, people would be a bit more understanding. They made this announcement in the most wrong way possible, and it's baffling to a lot of people that they're saying that there won't be a game with every Pokemon in it ever again.
What's more baffling is how much a pass Gamefreak is getting by certain posters here.
 

Clefargle

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,122
Limburg
Isn't Nintendo the sole owner of the trademark? I always heard that since they had that they were the only ones with true legal veto power over anything Pokemon-related that gets released, even if TPC de facto manages the IP.

IP covers more than just trademarks, but yeah Nintendo owns some while a gamefreak shares the rest of the IP with them
 

TyraZaurus

Member
Nov 6, 2017
4,456
Isn't Nintendo the sole owner of the trademark? I always heard that since they had that they were the only ones with true legal veto power over anything Pokemon-related that gets released, even if TPC de facto manages the IP.

A trademark is a registered symbol, for branding and identification purposes, which also prevents infringing upon the brand's identity by imitators. A trademark's only power is that it is, effectively, a name. Nintendo being the sole owner of it (internationally, not necessarily in other contexts) doesn't do much besides protect the brand from being genericized.
 

JoeInky

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,379
I honestly don't care anymore, people are already trying too hard to normalise the idea of not having every pokemon in the game, probably as a reaction to some of the toxic elements of the backlash. It's going to sell a fuckload and any criticism is just going to be buried.

I'm done with this series now, SwSH looks shite and after Let's Go I'm just done, I don't have the time or the money to waste on this franchise anymore, there are loads of better games released all the time and the taste of waiting for gen 8 only to get this won't be washed out of my mouth for a long time, feels like I've wasted all the time I spent invested in this series now.
 

Gold Arsene

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
30,757
I think I'm done. This isn't worth getting upset over. There's to many good games coming out the rest of this year to bother with this one.
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
Nintendo share ownership of the trademarks domestically between them, Creatures and Game Freak but own the majority of the international trademarks alone
IP covers more than just trademarks, but yeah Nintendo owns some while a gamefreak shares the rest of the IP with them
A trademark is a registered symbol, for branding and identification purposes, which also prevents infringing upon the brand's identity by imitators. A trademark's only power is that it is, effectively, a name. Nintendo being the sole owner of it (internationally, not necessarily in other contexts) doesn't do much besides protect the brand from being genericized.
Interesting. So it sounds like legally 2 out of 3 have to agree for anything with a character resembling a Pikachu to be released, while Nintendo always has to agree to anything that calls itself "Pokemon" overseas.

It's probably just trivia since I'm sure in practice all three come to an agreement on everything, but still it's an interesting web of obligations.
 

Clefargle

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,122
Limburg
I'm pretty sure people are more mad for the state of the franchise from this point onward, as has been said before, over any sort of anger at Sword and Shield. If they said that this game wouldn't have every Pokemon but eventually there would be another game that did have one, it'd be fine. If they'd revealed this in a Direct or at their presentation, rather than during Treehouse, people would be a bit more understanding. They made this announcement in the most wrong way possible, and it's baffling to a lot of people that they're saying that there won't be a game with every Pokemon in it ever again even when they have every Pokemon's models and assets updated for the Switch.

Yup this encapsulates it. It was presented as a tough decision they had to make because of unforseen limitations. But in reality, it was clearly a business decision because they've already ruled out making a future game with all of them in it. Even though they announced Home just a couple of months earlier.
 

Clefargle

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,122
Limburg
I
Also, I can't believe people still believe Pokémon is the biggest media franchise in the world. That Wikipedia article has been disproven several times over this past summer.
At 90 billion it's the #1 grossing media franchise. Maybe it's not selling at #1 right now, but in total, it's grossed the most.
 

AbsoluteZ3R0

Member
Feb 5, 2019
885
I think this a more of a "the straw that broke the camel's back" type of situation. Over the last few iteration people got kind off tired of the game play and GF removing features; people were expecting something big from the first mainline game on switch but all you got was bad graphics, giant pokemon and subpar animations (some of them looks good). When they announced they are removing pokemon, mega evo and z-moves, I think it was the final straw for a lot of people. Ignoring the removal of pokemon and other mechanics, the game itself does not look very good imo.
 

foxuzamaki

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,550
Remember when Activision hired an entire seperate dev team since one wasn't enough to make high quality CoD games at a yearly pace? Remember when Ubisoft slowed down Assassin's Creed releases since people complained they wanted more from each new game?

These are both options available to Game Freak and Nintendo. Keeping a small dev team and a short dev cycle is entirely under their control. We've reached the point where they need to pick one of those.
I thought you was going somewhere with this but they already outsource heavily, sumo already had a huge amount of devs on it, what mames you think they aren't here? And there is a clear step up from sumo to swsh
 

Horohorohoro

Member
Jan 28, 2019
6,723
I think this a more of a "the straw that broke the camel's back" type of situation. Over the last few iteration people got kind off tired of the game play and GF removing features; people were expecting something big from the first mainline game on switch but all you got was bad graphics, giant pokemon and subpar animations (some of them looks good). When they announced they are removing pokemon, mega evo and z-moves, I think it was the final straw for a lot of people. Ignoring the removal of pokemon and other mechanics, the game itself does not look very good.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it doesn't look very good, to me it's just that it looks like just another by the numbers Pokemon game, but with features I enjoyed removed for the sake of features I don't really care about at all.
 

Antoo

Member
May 1, 2019
3,781
Then what is? Genuinely asking since I've never heard anything otherwise
I don't know. All I know is that the Wikipedia article contains outdated information for stuff like Star Trek and also it double counts basically everything for Pokémon. The $61m stat for "licensed merchandise" includes the games, trading cards, anime, etc., which are all included separately as well.
 

Clefargle

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,122
Limburg
I don't know. All I know is that the Wikipedia article contains outdated information for stuff like Star Trek and also it double counts basically everything for Pokémon. The $61m stat for "licensed merchandise" includes the games, trading cards, anime, etc., which are all included separately as well.

Yeah and Gamefreak shares in the profits of that licensing since they own 33% of TPC.

And what is up with your arbitrary metric? Hello kitty is #2 and is also plenty of merchandising and licensing.
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
I thought you was going somewhere with this but they already outsource heavily, sumo already had a huge amount of devs on it, what mames you think they aren't here? And there is a clear step up from sumo to swsh
What ever amount of outsourcing they need to do to have all the Pokemon return in a future game, that's the amount that I'm asking for.
 

boy power

Banned
Jul 29, 2019
213
What '' excites me '' is that since they are cutting down the number of Pokemon available, they really have much less to fall back on if (or rather, when) it becomes apparent how obviously mediocre the game will end up looking, and potentially being. All the trailers we've seen so far look pretty bad, and definitely not the quality I was expecting a Switch-powered Pokemon game to be.
 

Deleted member 51691

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 6, 2019
17,834
I'm not saying they should delay it, I'm just saying Prime 4 isn't necessarily a huge mismanagement.
It was in development for around two to three years with millions of dollars put into it before being completely rebooted, presumably with little to no content carried over in the new effort from the work done by Bandai Namco(?). If that's not mismanagement, I don't know what is.
 

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
The change and improvements to Three Houses gameplay systems, writing, and overall content is leaps and bounds ahead of anything GF would dare to attempt with SwSh(the biggest change being pokemon get big lol xd).

Pokemon might, and that's a very big might have a technical advantage over Fire Emblem(that's ignoring how the 3ds games ran like shit). But as a video game product it's so obvious how much more love, care and ambition was put into FE than Pokemon.

I think the saddest part for me is that nearly every single Nintendo series is having a revolution and set to or already put out one of the best in their respective franchises. Then theres pokemon all the way in last place, I never thought there would be a day where I find the new Luigi's Mansion game more impressive than the new Pokemon game, but alas, here we are

Ehh..we still don't know everything about SwSh. Who knows, it might have more content than Black and White. So its a
Why is it ridiculous? It's a single large, open, expansive area that connects to other more traditionally designed parts of the game.

It's cool, but it's not blowing anyone's minds. And the idea of camera control in a single area being a selling point for anything in 2019 is ridiculous.

I mean, would you rather not have the Wild Area?
 

hussien-11

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,315
Jordan
I guess that's where we disagree. I just don't see SwSh as ambitious at all. If it were I would be waaay more forgiving. Monster Hunter World was ambitious, and so no one on Earth complained that the number of monsters went from 100+ in XX to 35 in World (and Capcom's reassurance that they were working as fast as they could on more to come certainly didn't hurt). That's the biggest difference to me, and why so many fans are struggling with decision.

Sure there are trade offs in game dev, and doing one thing often means you can't do something else. But all I'm seeing is what we're losing and can't find any evidence of what we're gaining.

Actually a lot of people complained.
And how do you know it is more ambitious? Did you play Pokemon?
 

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
What '' excites me '' is that since they are cutting down the number of Pokemon available, they really have much less to fall back on if (or rather, when) it becomes apparent how obviously mediocre the game will end up looking, and potentially being. All the trailers we've seen so far look pretty bad, and definitely not the quality I was expecting a Switch-powered Pokemon game to be.

Me and lot of other people don't find them looking bad at all. I mean if we going by looks, well FE doesn't exactly look like BoTW or Odyssey in terms of graphical fidelity.
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
Actually a lot of people complained.
And how do you know it is more ambitious? Did you play Pokemon?
Ahh the old "the game's not out yet so you can't criticize it." That's one of my favorites, along with its siblings "you just didn't play enough to give it a chance," and "if you hate it so much, why did you keep playing?"
 

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
Ah the old "this is what you're getting take it or leave it". Basically "stop criticizing this game in particular"

Its a legitimate question. Do you not want the wild area in the game? I mean I certainly didn't even expect something like the Wild Area in the game.
 

Clefargle

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,122
Limburg
Its a legitimate question. Do you not want the wild area in the game? I mean I certainly didn't even expect something like the Wild Area in the game.

I wanted the entire game to have a free camera instead of just the overworld. I wasn't expecting Pokémon-of-the-wild, but s free camera in a 2019 game shouldn't be too much too expect.
 

JoeInky

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,379
Its a legitimate question. Do you not want the wild area in the game? I mean I certainly didn't even expect something like the Wild Area in the game.

Personally I'd rather not have it if it meant getting all the pokemon back, give me random battles and patches of grass any day of the week.

I'm just not interested in half-baked open world and roaming pokemon, they either do it properly, or they stick to classic style and pump the game full of content.
 

effin

Member
Jan 20, 2019
210
I work as a game artist and honestly the biggest thing (far more than the models and texturing) is the bespoke rigs and animations for almost every single pokemon.

While the modelling and full texturing process is pretty painful for each one, they do often have existing ones to work from which is a big help. If somehow the majority of the 800 or so pokemon were quadrupeds with similar animation sets, then maybe its doable. Even then though thats still an unbelievable amount of work. To have to do it though for every single pokemon is absolutely insane.
 

Murfield

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,425
As someone who is okay with not having every pokemon in the game, an interesting solution would have been to not go fully 3d.

Gen V has the best looking battles and the best looking pokemon. Because its not 3D you don't have to worry about lighting, rigging, or animations.

The games have been going downhill since gen V, this could be why.

Though, I suppose you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
 

Serebii

Serebii.net Webmaster
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
13,118
I work as a game artist and honestly the biggest thing (far more than the models and texturing) is the bespoke rigs and animations for almost every single pokemon.

While the modelling and full texturing process is pretty painful for each one, they do often have existing ones to work from which is a big help. If somehow the majority of the 800 or so pokemon were quadrupeds with similar animation sets, then maybe its doable. Even then though thats still an unbelievable amount of work. To have to do it though for every single pokemon is absolutely insane.
And, as an artist, hypothetically what would your team do if they had a workload like that, ported them to a new engine, and the rigs broke? How much work would it be to correct?
 

XaviConcept

Art Director for Videogames
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
4,900
Hey USGamer feel free to, you know, ask for permission to repurpose my expertise for content.
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
I work as a game artist and honestly the biggest thing (far more than the models and texturing) is the bespoke rigs and animations for almost every single pokemon.

While the modelling and full texturing process is pretty painful for each one, they do often have existing ones to work from which is a big help. If somehow the majority of the 800 or so pokemon were quadrupeds with similar animation sets, then maybe its doable. Even then though thats still an unbelievable amount of work. To have to do it though for every single pokemon is absolutely insane.
Our question has been how much work is saved by being able to draw on existing assets but for a different system? So in this case GF has all the files for all 800+ returning pokemon for US/UM. Some posters are saying those are so incompatible they should basically be thrown out while others are assuming you can drag and drop them into Sword and Shield and they'll work perfectly.

Do you have any insight into how difficult that would be typically?
 

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
And, as an artist, hypothetically what would your team do if they had a workload like that, ported them to a new engine, and the rigs broke? How much work would it be to correct?
a) Delay the game to fix it
b) Cut down on the number of Pokemon in this game, but reassure the audience that the rest are coming in future titles once you've rebuilt the library
c) Announce that you'll never have every pokemon in a single game ever again
 

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
Replace Tropius with your favourite pokemon, infact, 20 of your top 25 favourite pokemon, 5 will be kept randomly. Now what?

I'll play along but I'd obviously choose my favorites over wild area

Now I know its an example but realistically speaking, we don't know the final cut for all the Pokemon. However, I don't see them cutting away 80% of old Pokemon from SwSh. I say 80 since 20 is 80% of 25.
 

effin

Member
Jan 20, 2019
210
And, as an artist, hypothetically what would your team do if they had a workload like that, ported them to a new engine, and the rigs broke? How much work would it be to correct?
As a note, I'm not a full-time rigger or anything (work in concept art + 3D production art and only occasionally do rigging on projects), so take this with a grain of salt, as who know what crazy tools they have there.

That being said the best way I can frame it is if you look at the workload in a best case scenario. Maybe in this scenario the rigs are broken but still somewhat usable, maybe they need weight painting redone, to fix up animations etc. Even in this scenario this is a huge workload. Even just to reattach and test the rigs and make sure everythings functioning is huge, let alone testing that each animation works, let alone making sure that they have the correct animations and types of animations for all the necessary moves in the game.

I work in a pretty small team of roughly 10-15 people so we work on different scales for sure, but any other developer would have culled the pokemon a long time ago. That amount of bespoke rigs with bespoke animations is just honestly unbelievable.

EDIT: And if we were the developers, we 100% would have just done the same. Cut the number of pokemon down - then maybe re-approach post release how it can be handled. Maybe its that each Pokemon region gets added down the line? Theres a few answers but none are something consumers would be happy with.
 
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AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
Ahh, your bad taste in choosing to defend this game makes sense then. It's consistent with your shit taste regarding the best pokemon.

#SAVETROPIUS

Someone is triggered. Gotta love how upset people get over some missing Pokemon. More importantly, my defense of the game is me realizing that change sucks but its also something that didn't surprise in the slightest so I don't lose sleep over it.
 

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
Personally I'd rather not have it if it meant getting all the pokemon back, give me random battles and patches of grass any day of the week.

I'm just not interested in half-baked open world and roaming pokemon, they either do it properly, or they stick to classic style and pump the game full of content.

Thats a fair criticism. Hopefully they improve on the design going forward
 

Exellus

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
2,348
This is going to be a shitty Pokemon game and I'm skipping it.

That's my thoughts on the matter.