New Pokémon games could take longer to be released, but for a good reason

The Pokémon Company’s Chief Operating Officer Takato Utsunomiya said “more and more conversations” were held with the staff about how to keep a fast pace in releases while maintaining high quality.

Speaking with outlet Comicbook, The Pokémon Company COO said there were conversations on how to keep introducing “new experiences” to players while ensuring products released feature high quality.

“The path we’ve taken up until now has been this constant release, always regularly releasing products on a fairly fixed kind of a cadence,” he said to the outlet. “Always having these products able to be introduced and new experiences for our customers, and that’s how we’ve operated up until now.”

That’s when he mentioned conversations were held on how to keep a fast pace while maintaining quality, which suggests it’s become a significant challenge for The Pokémon Company.

Delivering high-quality products generally requires more time, so the company might now be realizing that the current pace for releases won’t remain sustainable forever. On the other side, the same result can be achieved by getting more hands at work, which could hint at outsourcing development or adding more teams to operate simultaneously on several titles.

Related: New Raging Bolt, Iron Crown info shown with meta-breaking Pokémon Scarlet and Violet moves

The latest main game of the license, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, was released In November 2022, roughly a year after Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Players also saw Pokémon Legends: Arceus release in-between, in January 2022.

For over 25 years, a new Pokémon game has been released nearly every year, and a new generation of species every three years, keeping a high pace for players since the license was first launched in 1996. This might change over the next decade.

The quality of games released is frequently questioned by players and experts. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were plagued by many bugs and optimization issues when it was released, pushing the developer to roll out successive updates focused on fixing the game for months, rather than quality-of-life changes.

Meanwhile, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet players will be able to discover more content soon with upcoming DLC The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, whose release is planned for fall or winter 2023.