Pokemon Scarlet & Violet - 18th Nov 2022! **OFFICIAL INFO ONLY**

ScraftyIsTheBest

On to new Horizons!
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Anyway yeah there's no reason to take the eshop dates at face value. Why they're so far off (Even in terms of "Winter" going into 2024 that would likely place it around...March, I think, not April) who knows but those are always the worst case scenario. Engage's DLC punted everything to December 2023 and then turned around and released Wave 2 two weeks after the game came out.
Generally, when there is no explicitly confirmed release date yet, listing worst case scenario ie projecting the tentative release date as late as possible is the smartest move in terms of keeping consumer trust because in the event that the product in question has to be delayed (which is extremely unlikely in the case of Pokemon anyway), it means consumers don't have the pre-conceived expectation to be seeing the product released sooner because of an earlier pre-expected "tentative" release date, thus making consumers less likely to be upset over a potential delay because they were originally promised an earlier release period.

So the eShop tends to make tentative release dates for things that don't have an explicitly confirmed date of release projected as far off as possible in that regard so that they make sure to keep consumers' expectations in check and prepare for any possibility of worst case scenario. It's smarter to list a tentative release date as worst case scenario so you don't risk promising consumers something that the developers didn't say and potentially upsetting them and shattering their trust.

Amazon itself also does this when delivering products: it's very common practice for Amazon to list expected date of arrival for a product you order as far off as possible so as to keep a consumer's expectations in check, and it is pretty common for things people buy from that site to arrive sooner than the date the website itself lists as the expected arrival date. Listing worst case scenario as the expected/tentative date prior to actual confirmation is considered the most smart way to handle things from a business standpoint, especially when it comes to keeping trust with consumers.

Most likely, the DLC will have Part 1 around September-November, while Part 2 will most likely be December so that Part 2 can push more DLC sales for the Christmas holiday for 2023.
 
I don't know how plausible it is, but given the larger time gap (Assuming November for late-as-possible in "Fall 2023" window on Part 1, one year after base game) between release and DLC compared to SwSh (IoA dropped in June 2020, 7 months after the November 2019 release of the game), I do wonder what there will be in between. We already have seen precedent for things like 7* Raids or other raids to drop outright new Pokemon without a DLC now, but will that be the extent of content to tide people over until then?

I wonder if they'd be hesitant to add too many Pokemon dripfeeds at the risk of disrupting Competitive seasons or any VGC plans, in which case there would have to be other content. Most immediate that comes to mind would be in-game rematches that could be revisited beyond the AA tournament, like the Gym Leader Rematches recurring, opening the Elite Four back up, maybe periodic rival battles
 
I don't know how plausible it is, but given the larger time gap (Assuming November for late-as-possible in "Fall 2023" window on Part 1, one year after base game) between release and DLC compared to SwSh (IoA dropped in June 2020, 7 months after the November 2019 release of the game), I do wonder what there will be in between. We already have seen precedent for things like 7* Raids or other raids to drop outright new Pokemon without a DLC now, but will that be the extent of content to tide people over until then?

I wonder if they'd be hesitant to add too many Pokemon dripfeeds at the risk of disrupting Competitive seasons or any VGC plans, in which case there would have to be other content. Most immediate that comes to mind would be in-game rematches that could be revisited beyond the AA tournament, like the Gym Leader Rematches recurring, opening the Elite Four back up, maybe periodic rival battles
Drip feeding new Pokemon* probably wouldn't affect much. VGC's ruleset is already locked in (Paldea Pokedex only iirc), and even the current Season 3 going on doesn't allow for those outside the Paldea Pokedex.
I doubt we'll see any "major" new updates (akin to Rematches and such) until the DLC hits. Maybe a small update to go with Home just to do last minute clean up, but likely no major content.


*By which I mean more akin to Charizard/Cinderace/Greninja, Pokemon already in the game just not available otherwise. Walking Wake & Iron Leaves I suspect will be the only new Pokemon dropped between now and the DLC since it was a special Pokemon Day thing + likely a tease for the DLC.
 
*By which I mean more akin to Charizard/Cinderace/Greninja, Pokemon already in the game just not available otherwise. Walking Wake & Iron Leaves I suspect will be the only new Pokemon dropped between now and the DLC since it was a special Pokemon Day thing + likely a tease for the DLC.
Also to be fair tecnically Walking Wake & Iron Leaves were "already in the data", as their IDs already existed from the datamine and just had got replaced with the usual default pikachu stats, but (correct me if I'm wrong) there's no other dummy data left now.

I (like many other) do think that these 2 were meant to be somewhere in the main story and for whatever reason, be it lack of time or just not liking the story enough, ended up being cut, but the concept art and designing was already done so they were like "eh just throw them as event pokemon".
Which I mean... I take it, honestly gradual introduction of pokemon would be the best way they can use to keep the competitive fresh since they do not do "balance patches".
 
I only wish they had been introduced with a bit more fanfare within the game context. The SV book was a genuinely neat set up that reminded me of old Mythicals, but then they were made to appear in raids with no story context or prompting after finishing the game to unlock 5*'s. I would have liked if they had to appear in Area Zero, maybe run into them in the lab or the cave like the Aggressive Raidon, and then that triggers them popping up in raid dens after at least.
 
Also to be fair tecnically Walking Wake & Iron Leaves were "already in the data", as their IDs already existed from the datamine and just had got replaced with the usual default pikachu stats, but (correct me if I'm wrong) there's no other dummy data left now.

I (like many other) do think that these 2 were meant to be somewhere in the main story and for whatever reason, be it lack of time or just not liking the story enough, ended up being cut, but the concept art and designing was already done so they were like "eh just throw them as event pokemon".
Which I mean... I take it, honestly gradual introduction of pokemon would be the best way they can use to keep the competitive fresh since they do not do "balance patches".
I don't think they were meant to be in the base game story at all. I think them being in the code at one point but scrubbed out was basically set up for a later release (Pokemon Day, in this case). Kind of like mythical Pokemon, to an extent.
 

In regards to the DLC 2 release date discussion, this guy seems to think 2024 is the target, even if it likely won't be April. If you don't know them a quick scroll through their feed will reveal their whole thing is exhaustively tracking and documenting global videogame sales, so I trust their judgement on figuring out release calendars
I mean that's just figuring out what the April 2024 marker on the eshop would mean

That doesn't stop the fact that they explicitly say "Winter 2023" in the direct, the press release, & the official website
 
I'd assume that their *target* release date is around christmas, but to cover their own behind in case anything goes wrong, they went very large on potential release.

Honestly, considering how many problems GameFreaks has had with rushed releases, I don't exactly mind if they tecide to play it safe and give themselves more leeway.

besides my backlog is already enormous as it is so the later I "have" to go back to SV the better
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Honestly, considering how many problems GameFreaks has had with rushed releases, I don't exactly mind if they tecide to play it safe and give themselves more leeway.
I have absolutely 0 empirical evidence of this but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of Pokemon projects got delayed internally as a response to the state of SV at launch. If you assume DLC 1 comes Fall and then DLC 2 is sometime in Q1 2024 that's basically the SWSH DLC schedule but pushed back 3-4 months. Even if the second DLC is Christmas, the first being delayed relative to IoA is still notable.

And note how I said "a bunch of Pokemon projects". I still am baffled by the Spike Chunsoft copyright incident and cannot believe for the life of me that it just somehow apparated there apropos of nothing. Someone working on the website must have received information from somewhere that they were cooking.

Am I onto something here or is this just terminal hyper copium that Game Freak and friends are finally taking scheduling seriously? You decide.
 
I have absolutely 0 empirical evidence of this but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of Pokemon projects got delayed internally as a response to the state of SV at launch. If you assume DLC 1 comes Fall and then DLC 2 is sometime in Q1 2024 that's basically the SWSH DLC schedule but pushed back 3-4 months. Even if the second DLC is Christmas, the first being delayed relative to IoA is still notable.

And note how I said "a bunch of Pokemon projects". I still am baffled by the Spike Chunsoft copyright incident and cannot believe for the life of me that it just somehow apparated there apropos of nothing. Someone working on the website must have received information from somewhere that they were cooking.

Am I onto something here or is this just terminal hyper copium that Game Freak and friends are finally taking scheduling seriously? You decide.
it's the copium, definitely the copium
 
Am I onto something here or is this just terminal hyper copium that Game Freak and friends are finally taking scheduling seriously? You decide.
Honestly, the bad release state of SV did actually make a lot of press noise, the kind of noise that actually is capable of reaching higher places.

SwSh also wasnt exactly in a great state at launch BUT
- it wasnt AS bad as SV. Like ok textures were shit, and it kinda lagged a bit on online mode, but it was running clean on regular offline and there was mostly no issue with raids other than the questionable joining UI
- most people gave them the benefit of "first actual game on console" (Let's Go doesn't really count as it wasnt exactly a graphic marvel)
- aside from Dexit controversy, ultimately they weren't exactly introduced as anything innovative, yes there was the wild area and raid concept, but the Wild area did mostly deliver on what it promised to do (large explorable area that connected the major towns)

SV on other hand had, as much as I enjoyed them, MASSIVE flaws on performance expecially on longer sessions, with certain areas just being borderline unplayable (most notably the lake one), and the press was *NOT* nice at all this time, with a lot of major reviewers expressing concerns about "Nintendo being proud of their first party releases quality yet allowing Pokemon to release in such state", expecially when they were promising a "innovative way to play Pokemon with a full openworld".
Combined with the mild reception that BDSP had, compared to Legend Arceus which was mostly critically acclaimed, it had the potential to have signaled a problem with the mainline Pokemon games.

That said... I wouldn't exactly bet that these larger potential release windows are a product of this and that TPCI finally gave GF a bit more breathing room... but hey, guess to the copium distributor we go.
 
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If anything affected pokemon release windows it was probably covid. Legends Arceus deeeefinitely seems like something that was meant to be in the holiday slot, not BDSP (which I theorize was meant to be an earlier release). SV's TCG set also didn't get released for a few months which was unusual, and of course there's the whole thing with the Pokemon anime.

Legends Arceus and, yeah honestly even SV despite its Issues (TM), being as...complete, we'll say, as they were was probably a miracle owing entirely to GameFreak's experience with the Pokemon Merchandising Engine. Which is as impressive as it is sad.
DLC is probably more flexible in this regard
 
I only wish they had been introduced with a bit more fanfare within the game context. The SV book was a genuinely neat set up that reminded me of old Mythicals, but then they were made to appear in raids with no story context or prompting after finishing the game to unlock 5*'s. I would have liked if they had to appear in Area Zero, maybe run into them in the lab or the cave like the Aggressive Raidon, and then that triggers them popping up in raid dens after at least.
Could've very neatly followed up on the bit in the game (if I'm recalling right) about the likelihood of future Paradox species emerging from the "time machine" and ended up a roaming encounter sort of thing where the player is tasked with containing the unidentified species (Wake/Leaves) that have escaped. Maybe after having caught all the other species from both games or whatever.

In any case at least one of the DLCs if not both will be out in time for the holidays.

So, I was a part of a code cracking server that's been keeping track of all of these generation 9 leaks and stuff.

A the person inside essentially spoiled almost everything that happened write down to Game Freak the lane the DLC by several months and they initially planned.

Part 2 is allegedly coming out in January of next year
I, too, follow Khu on Twitter.
 
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Could've very neatly followed up on the bit in the game (if I'm recalling right) about the likelihood of future Paradox species emerging from the "time machine" and ended up a roaming encounter sort of thing where the player is tasked with containing the unidentified species (Wake/Leaves) that have escaped. Maybe after having caught all the other species from both games or whatever.

In any case at least one of the DLCs if not both will be out in time for the holidays.



I, too, follow Khu on Twitter.
Khu speaks in riddles that ultimately don't help until after the fact.

Like, this was essentially what that 4chan post had but a lot more detailed
 
I'm sure the eShop has done this before where the dates were just.. not correct, so it's not the easiest way to grab an accurate date.
I'm very surprised to hear this; when else has the eShop just plain disagreed with an official announcement?

Anyway yeah there's no reason to take the eshop dates at face value. Why they're so far off (Even in terms of "Winter" going into 2024 that would likely place it around...March, I think, not April) who knows but those are always the worst case scenario. Engage's DLC punted everything to December 2023 and then turned around and released Wave 2 two weeks after the game came out.
But for Engage, did the eShop dates match the official announcement dates?

Generally, when there is no explicitly confirmed release date yet, listing worst case scenario ie projecting the tentative release date as late as possible is the smartest move in terms of keeping consumer trust
Right, which is why "Fall 2020" for Crown Tundra was always going to be displayed as Nov 30, 2020 during preorder time. The Smash Ultimate fighters passes did this too: it was announced that the first five characters would be released by "February 2020", so all five characters had eShop release dates of Feb 29, 2020 until they were revealed. The weird part is that the eShop and the official announcement disagree with each other.

I'd assume that their *target* release date is around christmas, but to cover their own behind in case anything goes wrong, they went very large on potential release.

Honestly, considering how many problems GameFreaks has had with rushed releases, I don't exactly mind if they decide to play it safe and give themselves more leeway.
I don't mind the ~6 month delay at all either. I'm just wondering why they would announce the earlier dates in the first place. If they already knew their target deadlines were going to be Dec 2023 and April 2024, I'm wondering why they would put "Fall 2023" and "Winter 2023" in their trailer so prominently, instead of something like "Late 2023" and "Early 2024".
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
with a lot of major reviewers expressing concerns about "Nintendo being proud of their first party releases quality yet allowing Pokemon to release in such state"
Yeah, I'd honestly be inclined to think that's a sizeable factor if an internal delay has taken place. So much of Nintendo's image and branding is tied to the idea that they cannot fail you in any major way. Maybe not everything they make is a masterpiece, but Nintendo Bad is supposed to be a wholly different flavor from Bethesda Bad or Activision Bad. Nintendo Bad is something like Nintendo Switch Sports - fairly bland and content-light but otherwise looks nice and functions with no hiccups to speak of. Consistently permitting one of their biggest moneymakers to slip under that radar in fashions like SV isn't something they can just shrug at and go "Oh well sucks for Game Freak I guess", it inevitably reflects badly on them, too. If casual consumers are led to believe that even Nintendo can no longer avoid shipping bug-ridden, woefully unpolished messes, that's some serious "The gaming industry has fallen" shit that could form huge cracks in their fortress of prestige.

Don't wanna get too bogged down in corporate fanfiction at 2 AM but this definitely feels like a "Strike 3, you're out." SWSH might've been given some leeway because first console game that wasn't trying to innovate too hard and BDSP could just be thrown out as an outlier, but SV? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out change is needed before the Pokemon production cycle becomes really problematic.
 
I know that everybody know the myth of World Turtle, and Terapagos is probably responsible of Tera crystal etc ... but I've never seen the link between the Paldea map and its appeareance !

It is really shaped like Paldea map ! The head = mountain, the crystal in the center = Area Zero , the fact that there is 18 badges and 18 types are on its shell etc... Really clever
 

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Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
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A theory I've heard and thought about myself.

The 4 Blueberry Academy trainers are in a weird position in regards to character reveals. We have their designs, and that's basically it. Usually every other time we see big new characters pre-release they get names and brief descriptions at the very least, sometimes more. But not these 4, apparently. So with that in mind, what exactly is their deal? Well, I have a hunch.

Remember, this school's focus is supposed to be battling. That much has been spelled out loud and clear. And unlike Crown Tundra, Indigo Disk is explicit "postgame" that mandates you beat the base game and Teal Mask before being allowed to play. Battle-oriented endgame activity ran by a cohort of new characters, huh...

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Hey, before you start tossing your insults about me being leagues too hopeful and optimistic for my own good, consider: I am not grasping even a quarter of the straws of the Southern Kalos DLC cope that some users in this very forum partook in.
 
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A theory I've heard and thought about myself.

The 4 Blueberry Academy trainers are in a weird position in regards to character reveals. We have their designs, and that's basically it. Usually every other time we see big new characters pre-release they get names and brief descriptions at the very least, sometimes more. But not these 4, apparently. So with that in mind, what exactly is their deal? Well, I have a hunch.

Remember, this school's focus is supposed to be battling. That much has been spelled out loud and clear. And unlike Crown Tundra, Indigo Disk is explicit "postgame" that mandates you beat the base game and Teal Mask before being allowed to play. Battle-oriented endgame activity ran by a cohort of new characters, huh...



Hey, before you start tossing your insults about me being leagues too hopeful and optimistic for my own good, consider: I am not grasping even a quarter of the straws of the Southern Kalos DLC cope that some users in this very forum partook in.
you don't get to call other people out on the cope straws, bro

we all saw the BDSP/Legends Arceus coping you took part in
 
Next 7-Star Raid is Decidueye with Flying Tera type
After the past unique and thematic tera type choices like Dragon Charizard, Fighting Cinderace, Poison Greninja, and Water Pikachu, the choice of Flying Decidueye makes sense but still stands out in a mundane way because you can just get it naturally whenever you hatch a Rowlet. I guess the point is to not use STAB, but I think giving it a Ghost tera type would have been more interesting and something you would have to spend shards on otherwise. I guess we'll see what gamefreak has planned against Miraidon for an Electric-weak raid without an immunity.
 

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