>>41251828>>41251837>>41251868They can do better, they could if they wanted to?
Who is 'they'? Nintendo? Game Freak? The Pokémon Company? Creatures inc? The public investors in Nintendo, and by extension all of these?
Lots of hands in that pot, and only one of them *really* cares about making a game the best it can be. Another wants to, but struggles. And the others are far more concerned with branding, marketing, and all of the other things related to Pokémon - cards and plushes and animes and such.
Let's shift for a second and think about Assassin's Creed. OKish series that suffers some of the same criticisms as Pokémon - annual releases, OKish reviews, not much iteration. AC2 was a high point, then it petered down pretty bad. Then Black Flag came up as a high point... then the same. AC Origins looked like it was going to revive the series, then Odyssey was much of the same.
I listen to Pachter often, in the same way that a person keeps an eye on a hungry wolf. Investors think differently, and innovation is costly and risky. If you have a brand that brings in as much as Pokémon, you don't shake it up. You do the bare minimum and you keep the most people happy. It's better to have a mediocre game once a year over five or six years that just satisfies your customers than to spend a ton of time and energy into something they'll buy anyways.
So when I see everyone screaming, it's like, yes - I understand you want better. You *deserve* better. No Nintendo game should be like this. Nintendo thrives on Zelda-like masterpieces. And Pokémon just... isn't.
But I honestly believe, deep down in my gut, that if we keep up on this path they're never, ever going to try any harder than they are right now. The risk to reward will be far too great, and they'll can it and instead just phone it in for the foreseeable future, and go to releasing Stadium-style games on Nintendo's consoles from here on out and leave the rest of the work for apps.
Anyways that's my two cents.
