Pokémon Go stimulated an incredible era that continues with Sword and Shield

Since its launch in 2016, more than a billion people have downloaded Pokemon Go, which is significantly more than has played all previous entries in the series. At its peak, tens of millions of people play every month, invade the streets of the city and turn around. Pokemon Go in the first real world video game. He introduced new people into the franchise and rekindled the interest of faded fans.

Often when an entertainment property reaches this type of success, especially with a simplified approach like Pokemon Gofans are worried about abandoning their beloved games. But that's not what happened to Pokémon: instead of, Pokemon Go inspired a creative boom for the franchise, leading to some of the best, most accessible Pokémon games to date. And with the revelation made yesterday of Pokemon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo switch, this trend seems to continue.

Things started slowly enough. In the summer of 2016, when Pokemon Go mania was at its zenith, Nintendo revealed that sales of old Pokémon The games on the 3DS exploded, largely because of the increased attention paid by the mobile game AR. A few months later, Pokémon Sun and Moon has become two of Nintendo's top-selling games. Not surprisingly, these numbers have begun to impact the games themselves.

Picture of James Bareham / The Verge

In 2017, Nintendo released Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, improved versions of previous 3DS games. And these games had a number of features especially inspired by Pokemon Go, including a simpler user interface and the ability to capture stronger monsters much earlier in the game. "We knew we had a good fan base, but of course we were surprised by the large number of users which have proved so important. Pokémon the fans when Pokemon Go has been freed," Sun and Moon director Shigeru Ohmori said The edge in 2017. "We want to build on the excitement of the past year."

Last year, things went a step further with Pokémon: let's go, a game designed explicitly to combine the accessible character of Pokemon Go with a more traditional RPG. It removed staples from series and genres, such as random battles, and removed many other non-essentials, while adding more playful features such as motion-controlled tokens to capture pokemon and the ability to leave your favorite monster follow you, as in the cartoon.

Before these games, the series often felt like they were in a wait pattern, with slightly improved new entries compared to their predecessors, while adding more and more complicated features that seemed useless. But with the inspiration of Pokemon Go, Pokémon Games have become more hospitable, simplifying the formula without ruining what makes it so effective in the first place. "Pokemon Go really did the second Pokémon so to speak, and it was really a rare opportunity that no one could have counted on, "said longtime series director Junichi Masuda. The edge last year.

It is still too early to say whether the Sword and Shield will follow this trend. According to the brief overview of yesterday, they seem to be much more traditional than Let's go. Importantly, they are also the first main line Pokémon games in his debut on a home console. That means it will probably be the biggest and most beautiful entry in the series so far – and with that, we could see yet another Pokémon boom.