Some kind of new Pokemon project called The Pokemon Works is in the, uh, works, but it’s not very clear what it is.
Earlier this year, The Pokemon Company seemingly set up a new subsidiary called The Pokemon Works, with it apparently being located in the same building as ILCA, the studio behind Pokemon Home and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. It’s been unclear what exactly The Pokemon Works is, but an official website is now up and running and is shining a bit of light on the whole ordeal – emphasis on a bit. Based on a machine translation, The Pokemon Works is focused on working on services like Pokemon Home, which makes sense given that it’s in the same building as ILCA, but also to develop games in the franchise. What games, you ask? Haven’t the foggiest! But they’ll all be Pokemon-related at the very least.
The site’s about section is actually a message from the head of the studio, Takuya Iwasaki, a developer who has worked on titles like Nier, Drakengard, and more recently Sand Land. In terms of further details, though, you’re out of luck. The rest of the about section message is mostly about how Pokemon are your friends, and trying to make realistic and accessible Pokemon experiences, which is mostly just corporate speak. Right now it doesn’t appear that there’s any obvious connection to that massive Game Freak leak from last month, so we’ll just have to wait and see what it has to announce.
Apart from the aforementioned leak, it’s been a very quiet year for Pokemon. We know that there’s a new Pokemon Legends in the works, Z-A, which was announced back in February, but we haven’t heard anything since then, and there’s been no word on the tenth generation of games either. Perhaps Game Freak is slowing things down considering fan reactions to Scarlet and Violet – those pair of titles were littered with bugs and framerate issues at launch, and an empty open world didn’t help much either. Here’s hoping whatever’s next can bring back some of that classic Pokemon magic.