This is something I never wanted to see and honestly something I thought I never would see. Game Freak has actually come out and openly admitted that Pokémon has become less of a priority within the company. The reason why we're seeing this is because Game Freak is becoming less important to the Pokémon Company and therefore Game Freak is focusing on other projects instead of Pokémon. Game Freak obviously like many other game developers perhaps more than most keeps it's inner workings in a tight wrap. Not many people know how the company works and what's currently going on inside it since of course that would spoil game elements and might expose trade secrets for other competing developers to take advantage of. That makes it very hard to understand exactly what's going on within the company itself.
I stumbled upon something that I did not expect to find, a rather hidden interview with Game Freak detailing many previously unknown things about the company's current operations. The interview was posted about a month ago by Video Games Chronicle, a site that I never personally visited until now and haven't seen or heard anyone else discussing this anywhere. There aren't even any comments on the actual article itself. The reason this interview flew under the radar is likely that it features a relatively unknown member of Game Freak or at least compared to those like Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori named Masayuki Onoue. A programmer whose worked on the Pokémon games since Black & White who also worked on some side games for Game Freak. The interview was likely overshadowed by the Pokémon Direct at E3 that happened immediately after it was posted.
In the interview, Onoue talks about the organizational structure of Game Freak, it's current focus, and priorities while discussing a secret project called, "The Gear Project". There's one part about the interview that will blow your mind and shock you just as it did to me. The article starts off by saying that "Pokémon developer Game Freak is increasingly prioritizing original game creation, in order to grow the experience of it's staff." Apparently that's the Gear Project's aim. Now growing experience of newer staff has been a focal point of Game Freak's policies for a little while now since the company is growing older after being around for 30 years. We saw this for instance when Game Freak assigned it's junior development team to create Ultra Sun & Moon shortly after Sun & Moon were released while the senior development team was tasked with starting to develop Sword & Shield.
Onoue in the interview goes onto say that "by taking breaks from its flagship Pokémon series, Game Freak's creators can return to the franchise "refreshed" and improve the series with experience gained." Now this is something that isn't entirely new to us. We know that Game Freak has worked on a few other games in the past since Pokémon has been around with a few examples being HarmoKnight, Pocket Card Jockey, and Giga Wrecker. Given that new main series Pokémon games come out pretty much every year and especially recently, I've always found this to be a little bit weird since you'd likely want to invest all your resources into what's touching the lives of most people and what is most profitable. Taking several breaks just to work on other things just doesn't seem to make sense with such rapidly released series of games, but hey burnout is a real thing.
I can understand the odd diversion to try to get the creative juices flowing so as long as it doesn't substantially impact or harm Pokémon. The keyword here though is that he said Game Freak is increasingly prioritizing original game creation. Now If we look at each 5 year period since the creation of Pokémon in 1995, we can see that the number of non-Pokémon main series games they've created has steadily increased to an unreasonable level. From 1995 to 1999 they created 3 side games (spinoffs) with two in 1996 and 1997, mainly because Pokémon wasn't a huge thing during their development yet. Of course from 2000 to 2004 they created zero other side games (spinoffs), from 2005 to 2009 they created one, from 2010 to 2014 they created two, and from 2015 to 2019 they created five. So basically in each 5 year period since Pokémon blew up and became incredibly popular it's been 0, 1, 2, and 5 official side games (spinoffs).
Interestingly right as the side games (spinoffs) started really sprouting, that's when many fans started reaching a general consensus with regard to a general decrease in the quality of the main series games right around X & Y in 2013 then with Sun & Moon, Ultra Sun & Moon, and of course Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee (LGPE). But in addition to all of this listen to the next thing that Onoue says which absolutely shocked and infuriated me personally: "There are two different production teams here, simply named Production Team 1 and Production Team 2," Onoue explained. "Team 1 is fully dedicated to Gear Project, while Team 2 is for the Pokémon operation." "What this means is that Game Freak as a company is prioritizing Gear Project, which is production team number one, more than Pokémon in general. We are always trying to create something that's equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon."
I am absolutely dumbfounded that a Game Freak employee actually came out and straight-up said that the company prioritizes side games (spinoffs) / other intellectual properties (IP's) more than Pokémon itself which is what the company is known for. It just so happens that Game Freak announced it's biggest side game project of all time in about eight months before this interview was posted. How interesting. This is especially ridiculous If you consider how much more of an impact the Pokémon games have made on people's lives and how much people love it than any other game that Game Freak has ever made even in their early days before Pokémon. In fact Game Freak's best selling side game ever has been Yoshi for the Game Boy which has sold 3.1 million copies worldwide and was released five years before Pokémon Red & Green (Pokémon Red & Blue) came out in Japan and the United States.
Comparatively Game Freak's worst selling main series Pokémon game of all time was Pokémon Crystal which sold more than double that at $6.4 million. In total main series Pokémon games have sold over 250 million copies worldwide, meaning that Pokémon accounts for over 97% of Game Freak's all-time sales. Even though they were in business making games six years before Pokémon even came out, not only has Game Freak been apparently prioritizing the Gear Project and it's side games but it's also working on it's most massive side game to date concurrently with Sword & Shield, "Town". A fully developed JRPG for the Nintendo Switch that in my opinion looks better graphically than Sword & Shield and that I think we can all agree looks to be Game Freak's biggest side game project to date. A lot of people were arguing with me saying that Town development wasn't affecting Sword & Shield but it turns out not only was this correct but I was actually underestimating the effect that it's having.
In reality it turns out it's actually a priority here and If Game Freak allocated the time, resources, and people that's investing into Town onto Pokémon Sword & Shield, we wouldn't have things like the graphical problems, lack of Mega Evolutions, lack of National Dex, etc. These things would be easily possible to complete with the full power of Game Freak's 150 or so employees or at least way more than what are currently being used for Pokémon Sword & Shield. The weird thing is we all knew Pokémon was going to be way more profitable and have a greater impact on the lives of millions of people than any other side game they create. Not to mention the fact that this is exactly when they should be focusing on Pokémon the most: A new generation on the home console for the first time. Something which fans have been desperately waiting to experience for years If not decades.
So in light of this new information what in the world could be the reason for the super enhanced focus on the side games (spinoffs)? After all there can no longer be any debate that this is the problem that Sword & Shield is having. Game Freak is simply diverting it's resources away and into side games purposefully and with the utmost priority as said by an employee of Game Freak himself. Without this diversion there would be no lack of quality or content in the new Pokémon games because there would be enough resources to fix the problems that fans are overtly pointing out with the games or better yet these problems wouldn't have existed in the first place. In terms of answering this question, Game Freak is losing influence on the Pokémon Company because of the success of Pokémon GO as well as the company's newfound focus on mobile gaming.
Game Freak needs a safety net. I think they realized that so long as they get a new generation and a new Pokémon game out there every couple of years it will sell enough to at least be profitable. But now they wish to branch out and make something new, and in the words of Onoue himself, "Create something that's equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon." It seems to be a combination of these two factors a bit of complacency knowing that Pokémon will sell even If all of Game Freak's efforts aren't put into it and having a Plan B series of games in case Game Freak continues to lose importance within the Pokémon Company. Anyway there you have it, proof that Pokémon is in the back seat in terms of Game Freak's priorities.
