Pokemon Champions was not ready for launch that much is apparent for the amount of discourse online regarding the game when it launched on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on 8th April. Players were quick to point out the poor animation, the bugs and the missing content. While Pokemon Champions seems to be a work in progress, Eurogamer sat down with the game’s producer Masaaki Hoshino. Here’s a snippet of what he said and you can read the full interview here.
Eurogamer.de: Many fans are currently scrutinizing Pokémon video games primarily in terms of graphics: With Pokémon Champions, did you make it your mission to get the best possible graphics from the game, or do your priorities lie elsewhere?
Hoshino: Yes, as a Pokémon fan, I naturally understand the various discussions currently taking place within the fan community. I can totally relate to all of it. Regarding the graphics and gameplay, we’ve truly tried to do our best in both areas. The battle system is a huge focus. And what we’re really concentrating on is ensuring fairness—since it’s such a competitive battle game—and that the traditional game system works, and that we have that firmly under control. But as far as the visual side, the graphics, is concerned, I have experience from working on Pokkén Tournament, and one of my goals for that game was actually to make the Pokémon game with the best graphics at the time.
And I think we did a good job with that back then. But only two Pokémon were ever visible on screen at the same time. With Pokémon Champions, we have more limitations. Nevertheless, there are some things I really wanted to tackle – as a kind of new challenge. One of the things you could see in the demo, for example, was that all the Pokémon have their own shadows. These shadows and the spatial depth they create are one of the things that was particularly important to me. I really wanted to incorporate that kind of visual reality into the game. And another thing I want to mention is the battle effects: we developed them from scratch in this game. I was very thorough in reviewing them and personally went through every single one. Phew, that was a lot of moves.
Eurogamer.de: Can you tell us what stage of development you are currently in?
Hoshino: All I can say is that we’re doing our best. I feel sorry for the team I left behind in Japan. And I know I need to get back as soon as possible to help with development. I’m flying back tomorrow.
Something is clearly wrong at Game Freak at a management level. There is no reason their games should look that abhorrent in 2026
What I have a hard time understanding is how Nintendo can let GameFreak develop games like this…. as much as I know that thanks to the Internet they can address the different problems of a game, but for several years now the quality at GameFreak has really been dropping.
And don’t tell me it’s due to a lack of resources, they are financed by Nintendo
Everything died after Gen 7.
They really need to sharping their skills in order to make a game to be as fun as possible instead of making it very poor.
“Pokemon Champions was not ready for launch that much is apparent for the amount of discourse online regarding the game when it launched on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on 8th April.”
Crazy run-on sentence right at the start of the article
I kinda miss the pre-internet gaming console days where companies had to finish and polish games before launching them. I mean, conceptually it’s better how it is now because devs can update games for fixing bugs, balancing, and even adding new content. But… usually it just means they launch underbaked games
Glad I never put a cent into this game. I used some Guinea pigs from sword and arceus (gyarados, abamosnow, glalie, luxuray, garchomp and gardevoir). Got bored and went back to sinnoh and galar. They’re gonna give us the fomo like that crash team racing remake and offer microtransactions for victory points I bet. Legends arceus is my favorite pokemon game on switch.
I always thought Pokémon presented well on handhelds up through 3DS. Somehow the retooling for HD displays was very cobbled and seemingly resisted. Obviously not a money issue, and in empathetic because I daydream about a timeline in which 3DS 2 exists and handhelds aren’t required to shoehorn full console games
That’s either a lie or it’s really sad. The cost of hiring one actual competent honest professional to step in and look at what you’ve done before you release it would be so cheap and so worthwhile but they prefer to leave everything to their team of inept elderly team that never took a course on modern development. They have still yet to patch the bug crippling the resolution on Switch 2, where there’s no excuse for 30 fps. The grass on the recruitment animation glitches and clips through the ground like it’s 2005 – a huge deal, no, but indicative and hilarious considering it’s something that would have taken moments to fix and it’s something you might see hundreds of times if you stick with the game. Scarlett and Violet had no excuse for the endless list of ridiculous bugs and horrendous design decisions. This isn’t a real game company, it can’t be, it’s a company where it was decided that it made more sense to let the janitors do the coding to save a few dollars because addicts will buy the games anyways. It’s depressing but sometimes you get a Legends Arceus or a Pokopia to remind you how good the series can be when handled by new people.
Inept elderly developers*
I really don’t think it’s because the devs are incompetent, game freak just likes to release unfinished horrible messes, it just keeps happening and happening and pokèmon fans are mindless consumers that will eat it up. Please stop supporting game freak, they have turned the franchise into an unpolished mediocre franchise