Tears Of The Kingdom Plays Like A Dream, So What's Pokemon's Excuse

"I am going to stop making excuses for Nintendo and The Pokemon Company"

[Snookies12]

Lazy and/or bad developers, plain and simple. They've just been enjoying their leisurely stroll for years riding that cash cow. Meanwhile, Zelda is out here showing exactly what you can accomplish on older hardware. When you actually put effort into what you're creating.

[luckytrouble]

Just a shame even TotK suffers from fairly persistent and obvious frame drops the moment the screen gets the least bit busy. Certainly not as egregious as Pokemon issues, but still painfully obvious when a game is barely able to target 30 FPS.

[--Onilink--]

Or.. one has 6x more time to release their game with as many delays as they need while the other one is tied to the production and release calendar of the biggest media franchise in the planet?

You can blame Gamefreak to some extent for not hiring more people, but they will still be bound to release schedules that are massively shorter than anything else on the market (other than sport franchises which… who could tell.. are also always lacking innovation)

[Snookies12]

That's a fair point, but considering it's the "biggest media franchise on the planet" they should really figure something out to put in more quality work. I just hate how much potential the Pokemon formula has, but it's never fully realized.

[--Onilink--]

I would love that too, and I definitely believe Gamefreak needs to expand their studio.

But on the other hand we also have to be realistic that a mainline pokemon game will probably never have sufficient dev time because the financial implications of it must be massive and in no way justified from a business perspective.

That said, as they start to move to more complicated games due to more advanced hardware, I wouldnt be surprised if they have to do an Activision/Ubisoft and just figure out a way to have multiple studios helping each other out

[Neonridr]

blame Game Freak here. Nintendo could enforce more polish I guess, but ultimately this is a 1st party studio with unlimited funding vs a 2nd party studio.

[Bobertt]

The Pokemon franchise is co-owned by GameFreak, Creatures, and Nintendo so they can't really force them to do anything on their own. I don't think Nintendo cares as long as it sells well.

[Neonridr]

my point was you can't exactly compare a 1st party studio with all of Nintendo's resources behind it vs Game Freak who primarily made handheld games on the GB and DS systems.

[badz149]

Nintendo knows their fanbase. They will gobble up anything pokemon no matter how little they improve from the previous and no matter how buggy. Pokemon is basically Nintendo's goldmine but they choose to throw shit at their fanbase and yet the fans are rejoicing. Weird fetish but hey, if it works, why even bother changing, right? Next in their menu is how to charge $70 for each version of the next game.

[gold_drake]

several things actually.

gamefreak just isnt used to making 3d games. still. its wild to me that a dev team that gave us some of the best games, is struggling with modern hardware so much. still.

i guess the limited outsourcing and budget could be one.

remember pkn snap 2? cyberconnect made it. it was great. the models were also fine as hell.

[Bobertt]

GameFreak hasn't been good for like a decade. The issue is they have a lot of old developers who lack ambition to make Pokemon better and have not improved their programming skills in years. This is compounded by the fact their management does not hire many new employees and prefers very small teams. They have around 170 employees and one of the original members of GameFreak said he would only have 20 employees if he could because he doesn't like too many people working on a game. Former employees have confirmed these rumors and have said it's not rewarding to work there because they always make the same thing and don't want to try new things or new technology. They are stuck in the past ways.

They prefer to keep Pokemon the same because that's the main way they know how to do it and because it made them a lot of money for little effort. That's why when they finally tried to make a open world pokemon game with new features it became a broken mess. It's also why they couldn't transfer over all the pokemon with the Dex issues years ago. There is also the issue of the story being too simple and the game being too easy. They have said they design the game for kids and they don't want to make it too hard so they have made it easier over the years. So the budget isn't the issue they are making a lot of money.

[gold_drake]

there was a thing about the limited budget for gamefreak years ago.

yes, they're making bank, but that doesnt mean they get a big budget.

but i agree on the subpar programming skills

[Nebaku]

"gamefreak just isnt used to making 3d games"

They've currently made more 3d games than they have 2d.

Also if you consider Diamond and Pearl as their first 3d game(which...well it was), That was 17 years ago.

[Bobertt]

Gamefreak are co owners of Pokemon with Nintendo so if they have a small budget it's cause they didn't want a big budget which would fit with their idea of a small team and least effort most money.

[anast]

People will buy it. There is no excuse. They are just giving people what they want.

[H9]

I have been saying this every time there's an article about how we needed a more powerful switch for 3 years now, and I would get downvoted, everytime a lazy developer puts no effort into making a game that runs well, the switch gets blamed instead, it's not like this is the first time the switch ran a demanding game like TOTK, XC3 and MH:R Look are a technical achievement for the console, but I know when the new Nintendo console get announced and it's not a NASA computer on a handheld people will hate on Nintendo for the wrong reasons all over again

[RaiderNation]

The "excuse" is Pokemon games dont spend 6 years in development like Tears of the Kindom did.

[--Onilink--]

Well, I would certainly like to see how you expect a game with a development time of less than 2 years be the same as one of 6…

Zelda probably hadnt even gotten into full production and were jusy prototyping during the time Gamefreak has to make their entire game

[RaiderNation]

I never said I did. I dont even like Pokemon. I was just stating the obvious.

[RaveTears]

Pokémon excuse is that isn’t completely own by Nintendo. If Nintendo own Pokémon then we would have Pokémon game’s looking like TOTK or Mario Odyssey.

[Imalwaysright]

That and Pokemon games aren't developed by Nintendo. If Pokemon games were actually developed by Nintendo I have no doubt that they would have higher standards of quality.

[antikbaka]

their excuse - you buy them anyway

[Inverno]

I suggest we wait for this "Project Bloom" game they recently announced to release. If that game turns out decent then we can ask what their excuse is for Pokemon. If that game turns out to be a mess too then the question will have been answered on its own. Ignoring also their last non Pokemon game, just to give em the benefit of the doubt.

[Kamikaze135]

Zelda games usually push what the system is on can do and I think Nintendo pushes for that with each major Zelda game. Pokemon has a successful anime series, movies, cards, toys, etc.....and the games are constantly breaking sales records no matter what state they're released in. Why spend 100 million on a game when you know 5 million will be more than enough and achieve the same results?

[Demetrius]

Haven't played pokemon in soo long, imagine a Pokemon game with an engaging story, thoroughly crafted lived in world, balanced combat where you can choose turn based or non turn based idk how they going to do it but they keep releasing the titles back to back too much

[Chocoburger]

Zelda dev cycles are 5-6 years. Lots of polish time available.

Pokémon dev cycles are 1-2 years. No time for polish, especially as the hardware specs have increased throughout the years, and game dev time has increased for every studio out there, except for Game Freak.

Stop making it a yearly franchise. These devs are crunching non-stop all year round.