Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will likely not include all 910 current Pokemon species. Earlier this week, The Pokemon Company kickstarted excitement in a new generation of Pokemon games when they announced Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, a brand new pair of Pokemon games. While details are scarce about the new games, The Pokemon Company did make clear from the outset not to expect every Pokemon species in the game. In the initial press release, The Pokemon Company noted that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet would be compatible with Pokemon Home, but that only species that appeared in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet would be able to be transferred into the game.
In 2019, Game Freak unwittingly created a major controversy when they announced that Pokemon Sword and Shield would not allow players to use every species of Pokemon – a first for the franchise. Their reasoning was that programming every Pokemon species into every Pokemon game ate up resources that could be spent on other parts of the Pokemon game and that excluding some Pokemon from some Pokemon games meant that they could shine a spotlight on other Pokemon species as a result. In addition, the creation of Pokemon Homea brand new pair of Pokemon games meant that Game Freak didn’t need to include functionality for every Pokemon species as players no longer needed to transfer Pokemon from game to game to keep their collection going.
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The change did not go over well with some Pokemon fans, resulting in the “National Pokedex” controversy. Every social media post made by The Pokemon Company were flooded with calls to bring back the National Pokedex, while some players vowed to boycott Pokemon Sword and Shield and future Pokemon games as a result. Despite that, Pokemon Sword and Shield went on to become the second best-selling Pokemon games of all time, with DLC adding several hundred additional Pokemon species. Of course, if Pokemon Legends: Arceus does not include some form of DLC, the current generation of Pokemon games would be the first generation of games to not include the ability to catch or obtain every available Pokemon in at least one current game.
Given that fans have had three years to come to terms with the new Pokemon reality, we don’t anticipate that this announcement will come with the same levels of outrage as before. Still, there may be some fans who don’t like the new Pokemon games, simply because they can’t truly catch them all.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will be released later this year for the Nintendo Switch.
