What’s the Future of Pokémon?

In honor of the Pokémon series’ 25th anniversary, we’re looking forward at what we want from the future of the franchise. Which direction should it go? What features most need to be added in the future of Pokémon? The Siliconera staff weighed in.

While the franchise is definitely going to stick to its casual, kid-friendly confines whether we like that or not, there’s still room to build on the endgame for people who like the game but maybe aren’t into cutthroat competitive play or tedious shiny hunting. The thing I’ve seen floated around the most that I’d really love to see picked up is the “run your own gym” idea. If you built a team with type and level restrictions, customized or recruited your lieutenants and configured and decorated your building, it could be engaging in the long term to optimize your teams and challenge others. Or even play through the campaign against player-built leaders? It felt like Game Freak was heading in this direction with its Secret Base offerings, but… then it stopped. — Graham

I would love a Pokémon gym management simulation too!

I think I might like to see a different sort of simulation. What if we had a game where we were Pokémon Breeders? We would have to care for other people’s Pokémon. We would raise our own for certain sorts of competitions. Maybe there would be a farming or crafting element, which would help us grow better quality food for them or offer better accommodations. Let’s run a daycare filled with cute critters. — Jenni

The ideas mentioned above do sound very fascinating. However, they wouldn’t mean much if we still couldn’t form a team filled with our favorite Pokémon. Having extensively played through the earlier generation games and built a deep affection with Pokémon from early-to-mid generations, I am one of those people affected deeply by the “Dexit” controversy. I am still staying to my commitment on not getting Sword nor Shield as long as they still don’t let me bring in every Pokémon, including my favorites like the Cyndaquil and Piplup lines.

If the developers still want to cling onto their words of not including all Pokémon in future games, I’d rather see them keep a full roster from sequential generations like the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon remake or even go with a completely fresh roster, like what they did with the original Black and White. — Kite

If anything, I think I’d like to look towards Pokémon competitor Digimon for some inspiration. The Digimon Story RPGs were particularly compelling, despite my having even less of a connection to Digimon than Pokémon, so I think that might be a way forward. Similarly, the stories of the trainers shown in the Pokémon Twilight Wings anime were quite interesting and helped build out the world of Pokémon Sword and Shield. Pokémon itself did that in Detective Pikachu as well, positing a city where Pokémon live and work alongside humans for purposes other than Pokémon battling. I’d like to see more of that kind of deeper story-driven stuff at work in a Pokémon game, be it as a spinoff or integrated into the core game. — Josh

I think the idea of a game where you play as a Pokémon Breeder is definitely interesting, Jenni, and I can imagine an approach that is cute and more about the personalities of Pokémon rather than their combat prowess. That said, mainline Pokémon games basically are games about breeding Pokémon for some players in terms of how they spend their time. I am one of those sort of players.

As for the series in general, I think we will see even more ways to consolidate our Pokémon collections from different titles. Being able to carry Pokémon from one generation to the next is a comfort, and let’s people get attached to their Pokémon. If they can do this with more types of Pokémon games, well, all the better, right? — Ben

What do you want to see from the future of Pokémon? Let us know in the comments!