Today at 6:00 AM (PST) The Pokémon Company announced the first games in the ninth generation of Pokémon, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. At the end of the trailer, a “late 2022” release window was announced. The gaming community has grown increasingly skeptical about release windows over the years, but is that warranted in this case?
Track Record
Game Freak does not delay games. Once they announce a release date, they don’t miss it. Pokémon is a franchise that is made up of much more than just the games, but is ultimately based off of the games, so it would cause a lot of problems if a game wasn’t ready while all of the other media surrounding it is. We don’t know if this is necessarily going to be the case for this game, but it probably will be.
Still, a situation like the current one has not been seen before. Pokémon Legends Arceus just came out last month, and now a new Pokémon game is announced for later this year. Game Freak has not released two Pokémon games this close to each other since Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green and Pokémon Emerald released during the same year in Japan. Those are Game Boy Advance games, though, not Nintendo Switch games. Obviously these games take much more work to make than those did, which does give reason to think something could go wrong. Given Game Freak’s track record, it isn’t likely something will go wrong, though.
Overall, it is safe to say…
Yes
…they will release in 2022. Barring the extremely unlikely appearance of unforeseen development issues or catastrophic world events that somehow affect development or release, it is hard to imagine these games not coming out. If anything, this announcement gives more reason to be concerned about if the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will release during 2022, since it is probably planned for release around the same time as these Pokémon games.
