2020 has been a complicated year for everyone, especially Nintendo. The company has simultaneously had a lot of successes and come across some significant obstacles to its projects. For instance, Nintendo started the year strong with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Fans of Animal Crossing have been waiting for years for the Switch to get a new generation in the series, and this entry was such a success that it picked up Best Family Game at The Game Awards 2020. On the other hand, Nintendo has gone through a drought of Directs lately. Without Nintendo Directs or international game conferences like E3 this year, a lot of Nintendo’s plans have become something of a mystery.
The next series that’s seeing the effects of this is Pokemon. Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield are a little over a year old now, and over the course of 2020, they got two DLCs that expanded the Galar region and added tons of Pokemon that were missing in the base versions. In spite of some controversy around them, Pokemon Sword and Shield are some of Nintendo’s best selling games to date. Both DLCs were well received, but for now, it’s unclear whether or not Nintendo will keep expanding Sword and Shield. Nintendo has compelling reason to keep working on these games, but it has just as much reason to move on.
A new region is always an exciting thing for Pokemon players. New regions come with scores of new Pokemon and a whole new environment to explore, often built around themes and aesthetics unique to that region. Although the Galar region’s reflection on the United Kingdom was yet another fun concept for a region, its reputation was marred by one of Nintendo’s design choices. Only 400 Pokemon appear in the region’s base Pokedex. Considering that there’s over 800 total Pokemon known so far, fans were outraged. In a series of games where a huge part of the gameplay’s conceit is collecting every Pokemon possible, it seemed counterintuitive that only some Pokemon would appear in Galar.
It seems Nintendo was sensitive to that frustration in the long run, because arguably one of the best parts of the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLCs was that both of them reintroduced Pokemon to Galar. Nintendo hasn’t gone all the way to filling the Pokedex back in, but making it partly possible indicates that Nintendo is interested in it. That makes it seem feasible that Nintendo will add more Sword and Shield DLCs in the future. Both it and its fans have a lot to gain that way.
Just about every Sword and Shield fan would be glad to have a complete National Pokedex to fill out, and the best way Nintendo could make that possible is by adding another couple DLCs to put the 200 or so missing Pokemon in the Galar region. Nintendo would definitely make a ton in the way of DLC sales by completing the Pokedex. Simultaneously, fans get to live out the spirit of the game by collecting every Pokemon imaginable. The sheer value in more DLCs makes it seem like the right thing for Nintendo to do.
Although there’s a lot to be done with the Galar region, there’s real life events that might make Nintendo want to be done there. Nintendo is celebrating a lot of franchise anniversaries in 2020 and 2021, and one of them is Pokemon‘s. Pokemon turns 25 next year, and Nintendo has already teased the fact that it has some big plans for 2021. It could be that those plans involve an ambitious DLC for Sword and Shield. Lots of fans are hoping that Nintendo will tie a neighboring region to Galar, adding way more space to explore and more Pokemon to boot.
The question, however, is if Nintendo wants to prioritize the franchise’s future over the present. Odds are low that Nintendo is about to leap into its ninth generation of Pokemon with another new region. Usually generations last about three or four years, and with the introduction of Sword and Shield, Gen 8 is only a year old. Instead, Nintendo might be focused on developing a high caliber remaster of previous games or regions to celebrate the 25th anniversary. Such a number seems like an appropriate time for a huge retrospective that ties regions together, far beyond the Diamond and Pearl remake that many fans are waiting for.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Nintendo probably won’t do just one thing to celebrate the anniversary. Super Mario‘s 35th anniversary prompted not just Super Mario 3D All-Stars, but also a wealth of side projects. Pokemon will probably get the same treatment. Even if Nintendo announces a new Pokemon game in early 2021, it could still supplement something like that with more Sword and Shield content. Frankly, adding a new DLC seems like the best way to help Pokemon fans to celebrate if they’re not ready to move on to a new game yet.
Ultimately, adding another expansion to Sword and Shield definitely seems like the smart thing for Nintendo to do. These games were huge sales successes, so there’s a really big market for the DLCs. There’s also a lot of changes and additions that fans want that Nintendo can try to facilitate or at least compromise on via DLCs. Nintendo is also becoming way more comfortable with DLCs in general, as its ongoing additions to Super Smash Bros Ultimate suggest. If Smash Ultimate can get expansions and updates from the end of 2018 through at least the first half of 2021, then Nintendo can do the same thing for a much younger Pokemon game.
Even if it’s impossible to say for sure what Nintendo will actually do, it’s easy to surmise what it would be wise to do. There’s no shortage of good reasons to do another DLC, even if the DLC isn’t something story driven like Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra. It could simply patch in a small but densely populated area to add all the missing Pokemon — a new type of Safari Zone or Wild Area that gives players the chance to catch them all. Next year will be a big one for Nintendo, but that doesn’t mean it has to leave Sword and Shield behind. It can carry those games into 2021, even while introducing new ones.
Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield are available now for Nintendo Switch.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply