I work at gamefreak in Japan, currently hard at work on the upcoming DLC. I can't say much about what I'm working on because I'm one of few English speaking people in the company.

However I'd like to share a story from a few days before launch. In Japan it's pretty normal for people to go to bars to get drunk after working and Masuda joined us (which is semi rare, it's happened a few times but he dosnt drink much). He drank A LOT way more than anyone else there, and then he started stuttering and he looked like he was going to cry. My Japanese is good but he was hard to understand I do remember him saying "Ishihara! Bastard!" He went home awhile after and came back the next day clearly hungover.

I don't think he wants to work on something as big as Pokemon anymore, the gist I get from him and people with him is that they want to go back to working on smaller DS Esque titles. We don't have the time or manpower to make a big next gen Pokemon game that will satisfy fans.

I also don't think he cares for James lol. He has a lot of art and plushies on his desk but none from gen 8.

Sorry if this is disjointed and poorly worded but I just want the board to know the people working on the games are just as dissapointed as you guys.