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Game Freak is the developer behind the Pokémon series, and it’s without a doubt the company’s greatest success. Game Freak will forever be tied to Pokémon, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have other game aspirations.

Game Freak has released a number of games outside of the Pokémon franchise over the years, and it appears the developer has plans to continue doing so. In an interview with Videogames Chronicle, Game Freak’s Masafumi Saito spoke at length on the company’s desire to create original IP both large and small going forward.

“It is very important to Game Freak to keep taking on the challenge of creating original games.

I think that creating a game from scratch, putting it out there, and getting a good reception is a great motivator for creators and is also very significant in terms of its meaning for the growth of the company.

With that said, we do not think in terms of limiting original games to small-scale projects. It has been ten years since we established a department that deals with original games.

Initially, team members did the same thing while also developing Pokémon, so it was hard to concentrate on developing original games. Now we work with external companies so that we can start experimenting with moving on projects on a similar scale simultaneously.

We want new titles to come out of Gear Project that are beloved by lots of people across the world, like the Pokémon series has been.”

[Game Freak's Masafumi Saito]

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ngamer01

1y ago

This could be both a blessing and a curse as shown by past releases. More new IP means GameFREAK can take some time away from Pokemon to avoid burnout, but the problem here is they are already overworked on Pokemon to the point that they cannot get their games out of BETA status since The Pokemon Company needs games to Madden their Pokemon franchise mainly to hit marketing goals for both merch, the anime, and anything else TPC manages.

The other thing is some of the original games GameFREAK does ends up not going to Nintendo platforms which cuts into potential revenue avenues. If GameFREAK makes a new game that does not have Nintendo support and the game flops, that's time wasted that could have gone to optimizing a new Pokemon game.

Edited 1 time