I work in the American branch of the TCPi in a position I will not disclose, and am privy to some of XY's development details. Generally, employees are only privy to details when it pertains to them/only when they need to know it for their job functions, no sooner.

Yes, there will be new types--Spirit and Shadow*--but in a way, that's kind of a smokescreen for even bigger news: There will be, in essence, triple types.

But not in the way you'd think.

Basically, the way Normal Type is implemented will be completely re-tooled, and won't be treated as a "type" per se. Offensively, all Pokemon will be treated as inherently Normal type--which is to say, every Pokemon who uses a Normal move will received STAB from it. Normal moves are still resisted by Fighting and Steel and Ghosts are still immune. Defensively, Normal types lose their weakness to Fighting and immunity to Ghost, rendering the type completely neutral defensively. It's as if Normal is now treated as "typeless" except for the STAB and Fighting/Steel/Ghost defensive aspects.

"Normal" will only appear as a Pokemon's type if it has no other type (and isn't re-typed). If a Pokemon has Normal as one of two types (such as Girafarig), it will now only be listed as one type (Pyshic in Girafarig's case).

You're probably thinking "but what about Helioptile, the recently-unveiled Electric/Normal? Why reveal its typing if such typing is no longer a thing?" They probably could've just left it as pure Electric and no one would be the wiser, but they published its typing the way they did so that they could use it to demonstrate the new handling of Normal type at the E3 conference, sort of a "poster boy" for the mechanic (and allegedly I heard they typed Helioptile specifically because it's Masuda's favorite Gen VI Pokemon).

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