Is a Pokemon Game Announcement Coming This Month?
Some fans and observers believe that we could get a new Pokemon announcement in the next couple of [...]
Some fans and observers believe that we could get a new Pokemon announcement in the next couple of weeks.
Back in 2017, the Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara announced that Game Freak had begun development on a "main series" Pokemon game that would be released for the Nintendo Switch. A year later, the Pokemon Company confirmed that this game (which was not the Pokemon, Let's Go Switch games) would be released in the second half of 2019.
We're now in February 2019, and many fans are wondering when the next Pokemon announcement is coming. And there are a couple of signs pointing that it could happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. For example, earlier today, Nintendo announced five days of activities at the Nintendo NYC retail store coinciding with this year's Pokemon Day. Pokemon Day is an annual celebration of the Pokemon franchise coinciding with Pokemon Red and Green's original release in Japan, but this year Nintendo has announced five days worth of Q&A sessions with Nintendo Treehouse as part of the Pokemon Day festivities.
Nintendo Treehouse is one of the groups in charge of localizing games for the Americas, but they also host popular livestream presentations where they show off upcoming and recently released games. Notably, Nintendo Treehouse has a big presence at E3 and they were some of the first folks to really dig into past Pokemon games after they were formally announced.
It's possible that Nintendo NYC just wanted to have some daily activities to coincide with this year's Pokemon games, but you do have to wonder what the Ninendo Treehouse folks would talk about if they weren't fielding questions about the upcoming Pokemon games.
In addition, there's also the timeline to consider. Both Pokemon X and Y and Pokemon Sun and Moon were announced 9 months before their actual release dates. Since these new "main series" games will likely be set in a new region and feature new Pokemon, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company need time to space out all the announcements and build hype for the new games. If Nintendo is aiming for a November release date (and Pokemon Sun and Moon, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee were all released in November), it seems likely that an announcement will happen very soon.
Of course, this is all just speculation. We know that a new Pokemon game is coming this year, so now we just have to impatiently wait for the announcements to begin.
