Last year, long time Pokémon fans received news that Ash and Pikachu’s journey will be coming to an end after being in the animation for 25 years. It was quite a culture shock for those who have watched the show for all those years to find out that their story was coming to an end. Although Ash’s character doesn’t directly decide the fate of the games, Game Freak revealed news of its own that has fans speculating on the fate of the series.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is the latest main Pokémon game Game Freak has recently released. And despite its performance reviews and mixed criticism, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sales were the largest the company had seen. Within the first 3 days of release, the games had sold 10 million copies, 4.05 million copies alone were sold in Japan. This was a huge success for the developers. Even though it had its drawbacks, many players still enjoyed the game and the community moved forward with Scarlet and Violet’s online community gameplay. But due to recent events, the fate of the Pokémon video game series is left in uncertainty.
In an interview with Video Games Chronicle, Game Freak expressed the idea of moving away from Pokémon altogether for other projects.
“Initially, team members did the same thing while also developing Pokémon, so it was hard to concentrate on developing original games. Now we work with external companies so that we can start experimenting with moving on projects on a similar scale simultaneously.
“We want new titles to come out of Gear Project that are beloved by lots of people across the world, like the Pokémon series has been.” said the company.
Even though the games are highly popular, it appears Game Freak wants to branch out of the concept of this series. Working on Pokémon alone took a lot of their resources. There are other games they’ve been working on, such as the recently released Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! While there is no news of any sort of new game in development, it would be interesting to see what other projects the developers would be able create. Game Freak has not said for certain it will be moving away from the franchise altogether, it appears that they do want to make new original games. This leaves the fans wondering how long the Pokémon video game series will go on.