probably none of you will believe me because gen 8 isn't even out yet, but that just makes me feel safer leaking some early stuff from gen 9. anyway: gen 9's battle gimmick is so far unnamed, but pokemon will be able to digitize themselves into a pixel sprite form and battle other digitized pokemon. this will include battling virus pokemon, which is a threat related to a major threat that will be revealed in gen 8's story.
in regular battle this will be used to hack pokeballs, and apply specific status debuffs to pokemon.
screenshot this thread.