At a recent earnings slideshow Dena — the company behind Mario Run and Animal Crossing port for iOS — make a brief but interesting mention of a new mobile Pokémon Game. It's only a single slide but it does specifically state that they "Plan to launch a new and exciting smartphone game" and that it will be "...based on the globally popular Pokémon franchise".
That's really all we know right now, except Dena plans to release it in its fiscal year, which runs March to March. So we may not see it the game in 2019, it could be early 2020, but I think we are likely to see it close to the launch of the Nintendo Switch Pokémon game; Sword and Shield.
Can we speculate?
Dena is clearly working closely with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company to create some exciting new titles this year, including a Mario Kart mobile game called Mario Kart Tour. With the knowledge that they bringing a whole new Pokémon game, we can do a little speculating.
Could it be a tie-in game to the main Switch release of Sword and Shield? It seems likely, the release window is likely to be 2019 holiday season so that would gel with the Sword and Shield launch well. What kind of game could it be? This we really don't know. I would like it to be a more traditional Pokémon game, as opposed to a Pokémon Go clone. I want it to feel like an RPG with proper Pokémon battles, rather than a simple flick-to-catch system. Give me some crunch!
What do you think?
Give me some of your speculations! How big a game are we likely to see here? Will it be a hybrid game like Mario Run, or a more fleshed out mobile game like Animal Crossing? Let us know in the comments.
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