Turns out there was a Pokemon Direct that occurred yesterday and I didn’t know anything about it happening so I was certainly surprised to see it pop up. Now there were two things announced but I have incredibly different feelings on both announcements so I decided to split this up into two parts so I could properly discuss how I felt.
Firstly the bad announcement, Pokemon Sword and Shield are getting paid DLC. The ‘Expansion Pass’ as they are calling it will consist of two seperate DLC areas; The Isle of Armour and The Crown Tundra. They are complete new areas to the game and will work in a similar fashion to the Wild Area in that they are fully 3D explorable environments. What really irritates a lot of people however is that these new pieces of DLC will also introduce many Pokemon that were previously cut from the game, meaning that Game Freak’s previous excuse of not being able to fit the Pokemon into the game or wanting to keep the balance for competitive matches are just incorrect now.
The whole expansion pass is set to cost $30 which is pretty expensive for DLC too and while the new Pokemon being added back into the game will be a free update it still angers me that the games were released almost unfinished and with many flaws and yet they are wanting to charge people for extra content that they admitted they had been working on “for a while” implying that possibly they cut this content out of the game before it was even finished just so they could sell it later. I’ve not been a fan of Sword and Shield ever since they announced Dexit but now it really seems as though The Pokemon Company are just aiming to become as consumer unfriendly as possible. I am aware that the excuse they used was that this means they don’t need to make a ‘third version’ of the game but my problem with this is that even if they did so and this is technically less money to pay for more content the base game is still not as good as other entries making it all just seem a bit too much like a marketing move to me.
I don’t know maybe I’m just being paranoid or ungrateful for this but I’m someone who completely believes in being good or at least fair to your customers and not just taking them for granted as money making machines. We shall see if this does end up being a good deal but for now I will retain my stance of not liking this move. That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.