Pokemon Champions Has the Potential to Be the Most Important Pokemon Game Since Pokemon Go

Pokemon Day 2025’s Pokemon Presents presentation was full of exciting new announcements, from our first in-depth look at Pokemon Legends: Z-A to new updates for games like Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket. One announcement stood above all the rest for me: Pokemon Champions. Carrying on the legacy of titles like Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Battle Revolution, Pokemon Champions is a new competitive-focused online battle game coming to Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.

Of all the games shown during this Pokemon Presents, I think Pokemon Champions has the biggest potential to be successful. It will carry on the legacy of games many of us have fond memories of, features compatibility with Pokemon Home, and will be widely available across consoles and mobile. That confluence of factors leads me to believe that Pokemon Champions will be the next mega-hit for this series, even if it lacks the vast regions of the mainline Pokemon games.

The root of Pokemon Champions can be traced back to the Pokemon Stadium games on Nintendo 64. At a time when the mainline games in the series were restricted to handhelds, these games stood out by letting players see Pokemon battles with similar mechanics to the handheld games play out in 3D. Both Pokemon Stadium games make the Nintendo 64’s top 20 all-time best sellers list, showing demand for this kind of stripped-back, competitive-focused experience all the way back in the 1990s.

Over time, The Pokemon Company’s approach to side games like this evolved. Pokemon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness on GameCube had stories attached to their Stadium-like arenas, while Pokemon: Battle Revolution on the Wii stripped things back and focused on presenting Pokemon battles in a visual style that still holds up today. Once the mainline series went 3D, Game Freak no longer released this kind of Pokemon spin-off.

Not satiating fans of this style of Pokemon game for that long means Pokemon Champions has the potential for a massive payoff. Some people might not want to pay $60 and have to play through a whole story to get their Pokemon fix, and Pokemon Champions could present a cheaper (potentially free; its monetization method isn’t known yet) alternative tailor-made for those not interested in the series’ fluff. That’s also why Pokemon Home compatibility is a genius addition.

Related: Every Free Pokemon Code Given Away During Pokemon Presents

Through various methods, it’s possible to bring a pocket monster captured in Pokemon Sapphire in 2002 all the way forward to Pokemon Home. There are likely tons of Pokemon fans who have specific Pokemon they’re nostalgic for wasting away in this phone app. This gives them a new way to utilize and battle with their favorites, enabling Pokemon Champions to appeal to nostalgic players. At the same time, it allows more competitive-minded players to battle with the exact Pokemon from the past two decades they want.

There is one potential caveat for this: “At the time of release, only select Pokemon will be available for use in Pokemon Champions—not all Pokemon available in Pokemon Home will appear in Pokemon Champions,” says a disclaimer in the press release announcing the game. “The Pokemon you can send to Pokemon Champions via Pokemon Home are limited to Pokemon that appear in Pokemon Champions.” Hopefully, not too many Pokemon get from the launch version of Champions; then again, the first version of Pokemon Stadium in Japan didn’t feature all 151 of the original Pokemon and was still a massive hit.

If it’s easier to transfer Pokemon from Home to Champions than it was from Red and Blue to Stadium or Diamond and Pearl to Battle Revolution, then that drastically cuts down the barrier to entry for interested players. Another way Pokemon Champions looks more approachable is through its availability on mobile. Just as Pokemon Stadium broke new ground by bringing traditional Pokemon battles to an official console game, Pokemon Champions will do the same with mobile.

Currently, players’ best options to get a Pokemon fix on mobile are Pokemon Go and Pokemon TCG Pocket. Neither delivered a one-to-one experience with the console games, but that didn’t stop them from succeeding. Pokemon Go quickly became a cultural phenomenon when it was released in 2016 and still attracts new players to this day, while Pokemon TCG Pocket, which was only released last October, has already amassed 100 million downloads, according to The Pokemon Company.

Plenty of Pokemon fans, young and old, may not play the latest games on Nintendo Switch but would have a vested interest in playing something like Pokemon Champions on mobile. If those people show up for the launch of Pokemon Champions, we could have a new game that’s just as big, if not bigger, than those mobile Pokemon games. Meanwhile, Nintendo Switch players will have an alternate, more straightforward way to battle on console.

Of course, this is all speculative, and factors like monetization, Pokemon availability, game balance, and presentation will ultimately determine whether or not Pokemon Champions is a success. If all of the factors I’ve talked about live up to the hype when Pokemon Champions launches, though, I believe it has the potential to become one of the most popular mobile games ever, even with its stripped-back, battle-focused approach.

Pokemon Champions is in development for Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.