Pokemon Switch Development Was Harder Than Expected, Says The Pokemon Company CEO

At this point, there is probably no Nintendo Switch exclusive anticipated more than Pokemon 8, which is due to launch later this year. A lot of people are simply excited to see what the first true mainline Pokemon game for a home console will look like.

You would expect that, given their experience working around the hardware limits of the much weaker and more constrained Nintendo 3DS, Game Freak would know how to work with the Switch with ease, particularly given its developer friendly design. However, speaking to Japanese outlet Dime, The Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara admitted that development for Nintendo’s hybrid had been harder than the developers had expected.

He specifically pointed out having to make a game in HD, as well as one that is cognizant of the Switch’s multiple use cases (that is, portable and console modes alike) resulted in unique challenges. To be fair, I can see the problem here—but I hope that Game Freak got their training wheels experience with the just released (and very good) Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, and that Pokemon 8 will be technically ambitious and impressive as a result.

For now, we have no other information on the upcoming game. However, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company should take the wraps off of it in the coming months, so we’ll know what we are looking at soon enough.