Pokemon: the proof of Nintendo’s greed

We always like to think that Nintendo is the most altruistic of all the big brand publishers out there, and they’re always the one we like to claim “does it right” more often than not. But what if I told you that one of their biggest franchises serves to prove that Nintendo is far more corporate and cares a lot less than you think?

I’ll start by saying: I’m a huge fan of Pokemon. If you don’t believe me, let me list to you every game I’ve owned and played: Red, Blue, Yellow, Silver¹, Gold, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen, Diamond, Platinum, Pearl², Black, White 2, SoulSilver Y, OmegaRuby, AlphaSapphire, Moon, Sun, UltraMoon, UltraSun, Sword³ alongside side-franchise games Stadium, Stadium 2, Snap, Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Darkness², Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky.

¹ - twice, the first time on cartridge when it was released and on virtual console on the 3DS
² - these games were technically bought by me for my little brother but have come back to my collection since
³ - okay, this one is technically arriving today and I haven’t played it yet, but I’m still going to buy it so I’m still counting it

That’s a lot of games. That’s a lot of brand loyalty to this franchise of stupid monsters that I make battle to the point of unconsciousness in my bid to be the very best, like no-one ever was. It’s also a lot of money, and you might notice something because it’s hard not to notice:

Some of these games are, in fact, the same game.

Generations one through four are technically the same game. Now, let’s be generous here and say that the third game in each generation acts as a “separate” game because of new or changed story features, starting from two (because Yellow really didn’t change much beyond the whole “Pikachu follows you” thing and rebalanced movesets of Pokemon.) Let’s also be fair and say that the remakes still count as their own set of games for the same reason. This means that if we break it down by generation, there number of games goes as follows:

Generation one goes from three games (R/B/Y) to just one. Our total is one game sold to us three times.
Generations two (G/S/C), three (R/S/E) and four (D/P/Pl) go from three games each to two. Our total is seven games, but twelve entries in the series.
The remakes in these generations (FR/LG/SS/HG) increase our total to nine games, but sixteen entries in the series.
Generation five (B/W/B2/W2) goes from four games to two. Our total is eleven games, but twenty entries in the series.
Generation six (Y/X) goes from two games to one. Our total is twelve games, but twenty-two entries in the series.
The remakes in this generation (OR/AS) increase our total to thirteen games, but twenty-four entries in the series.
Generation seven (M/S/US/UM) goes from four games to two. Our total is fifteen games, but twenty-eight entries in the series.
Generation eight (Sw/Sh) goes from two games to one. Our total is sixteen games, but thirty entries in the series.

If you don’t count the third entries into the series as their own games, because they are still ultimately 80-90% the same game, then the total changes from a ratio of 16:30 to 12:30 where the first number represents the unique number of games, the second represents the actual number of games released. If you’re really stingy and you don’t count remakes, the ratio falls further and becomes 10:30.

In summary, Pokemon has at least double the number of games it actually needs to have, and encourages buying multiple copies of the same game through version exclusives.

I was always willing to, generally, forgive this greedy practise - and at this point after that breakdown if you don’t think this franchise was being greedy from the get-go, I don’t know what to tell you - because for the first four generations (so, the first ten years of the game) had that reliable third entry that was the most “complete” experience. Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum. And, generally speaking, many fans consider these third entries to mainline generations to be the best in their generation.

In generation five, this changed a little. Pokemon experimented with the idea of a true sequel, in the form of Black 2 and White 2. I don’t mind these games either, generally, because they were completely new games with new stories - and in fairness, generation five is still my favourite generation for the story. It was a cool experiment, so I thought at the time, to create a sequel where titular characters would reappear and show how they had progressed since the first game released. I liked that. But… this is also where the problems really begin. Because you see, we don’t need Black 2 and White 2, do we? We could have just had “Pokemon Grey” or something. It still could have been a sequel, it still could have had the exact same story that B2/W2 did, and it just would have worked just as well for a third release in the series.

But it wasn’t. It was two games. Nintendo was dipping its toe into the waters of further greed. Could they turn what used to be one game… into two?

The answer was yes. They could.

You’ll notice that Nintendo have never released another sequel to a mainline Pokemon game since. Weird that, isn’t it? We’ll come back to this point later.

Generation six is a strange generation. It’s the only one to exist that Nintendo just didn’t do anything with. No third game. No sequel. Among fans this generation is typically considered to be the weakest entry into the series, but financially it did well because this series is practically doomed to financial success even when it’s bad - we’ll come back to this point too - so it seems strange that nothing was done with it. It just came and then it just… went.

And then generation seven happened, and Nintendo revealed just how greedy it was willing to get. Do you remember our ratios from earlier? Specifically, the last two ratios of 12:30 or 10:30? Generation seven, in these ratios, counts as only one real game. If you ask me why that is, the answer is because: this was the generation that Nintendo stopped adding content for their “third” entry in the series and instead experimented with taking content away and selling a half-finished game.

Sun/Moon are unfinished games that were sold at full retail price.

UltraSun/UltraMoon were the real, complete versions of the game, sold back to us as if they were upgrades in the same way Emerald was an upgrade to Ruby/Sapphire. But they weren’t. When you sit down and take a really good look at the generation seven entries, it becomes obvious that the first releases of this generation were cut away in places, had some of their content snipped. It’s absolutely insidious.

It’s insidious because you can’t know that they were chipped and snipped away at until the second version of each come out. You can’t possibly know that Sun and Moon aren’t whole games until you buy USUM and realise “Hey wait a second… this story is the full one! They cut the ending quarter of this game out and sold it me like it was a full game!”

And if you still don’t believe that Sun/Moon intentionally had pieces cut away from them, only to be sold back to us in another game, then I invite you to look at Sword and Shield: the most cut up, sliced open, hack job entries into the entire franchise as it stands.

National dex? Gone.
Wonder trading? Gone.
GTS? Gone.
Functionality with previous titles through Pokemon Bank and Poketransporter? Gone (and don’t you tell me that it wouldn’t have been possible to make Pokemon Bank work on the Switch.)

Even if it were true that they cut over 400 Pokemon from Sword and Shield because they didn’t have the space on the cartridge (proven untrue by the fact that a national dex was patched in later) or because they wanted to focus on high quality animations (debatable claim at best given Pokemon are still boringly non-animated and NPCs re-use animations from the previous generation) the reality still remains that these games were intentionally missing features that Nintendo later sold back to you.

I said earlier that we’d come back to Nintendo never doing another sequel. We come back to that point here in generation eight: DLC! Now, whether or not you consider it an improvement that “sequel” content has turned into “DLC” content for a mainline game is personal preference, and you could make the argument that it’s better than needing to buy a full sequel at retail price because the DLC is cheaper than a full game. But you see, if you do make that argument, I’d like to present you with a counter-argument: the nature of version exclusives means that DLC makes a sequel more expensive. Now this is a hypothetical counter-argument, I’ll be honest. We don’t know yet whether the DLC will include Sword specific exclusives and Shield specific exclusives. If it doesn’t, then technically yes, it is cheaper to have sequel content in a DLC. But if it does, then it actually becomes more expensive. Especially because trading functionally like the GTS is locked behind the subscription service Pokemon Home.

In generation five, you could safely buy one of Black/White and one of B2/W2 and cover any missing Pokemon through online trading - this was in the era of the DS and the 3DS, so you could utilise a wifi connection to trade with anybody all over the world. With each game retailing at £50 or so at the time, this comes to £100. Sword and Shield still retail at £50, and their DLC £27. Home is an annual cost of £15 and is a required cost also for the GTS access. The total therefore stands at £92 if you don’t need the opposite version to get DLC exclusives. But if you do, not only do you have to buy the full retail opposite game at £50, but you also must shell out another £27 for the DLC pass there, which raises the total from £92 to an absolutely staggering £169.

In conclusion, I’m not saying that you can’t like Pokemon. All I’m saying is that Nintendo’s greed with this franchise is now blatantly obvious. They have gone from a generation comprised of two versions plus a third they add content to, to a generation where they cut away pieces of the main game and sell it back to you for a marked up price.

And it fucking sucks to be taken advantage of like this and know that no matter how much I hate it, Nintendo won’t stop doing it, because Pokemon is doomed to always sell. It’s never going to fail, the golden goose will never stop laying eggs, and even if they have a series of games that suffer from a bad set of sales, franchise merchandise ensures that it just doesn’t matter. Pokemon is doomed to success, and Nintendo are now really pushing the boundary on just how little they can sell their franchise fans and still turn a gross profit.