Pokémon: New Red Figure to be announced next week during Wonder Festival in Japan.

[Illusion]

I don't understand, why does it have to be Red? Why can't they just call him Ash Ketchum? Seriously, is there some licensing issue here?

I have said and always will say that if they made a Pokemon game based directly on the 1st season of the anime and brought back the voices for Ash, Misty and Brock this game could single-handedly make the NX a success. A story-driven Pokémon game based on the anime and its characters may turn off some of the hardcore fans on this forum but there are tens of millions of people out there who grew up watching these characters every single day on TV and have no idea that Pokémon is still a thing. Just look at what Jigglypuff and Pikachu did for the Smash Bros franchise and multiply that by like 10x if they actually went all out and made a proper game based on the anime (probably even more because the nostalgia factor is huge and we've gone 20 years without so much as a single game dedicated to these characters).

I have never seen such a massive piece of American pop-culture be under-utilized the way that the Pokémon anime has been. Why are we getting so many re-makes of past Pokémon games in an effort to tap into the huge nostalgia factor that there is for Pokémon and yet they won't even acknowledge their biggest nostalgia factor by far which is the anime? Microsoft and Sony would be going berserk right now if they were leaving an IP that was half as powerful as the Pokémon anime untapped.

Now is the time for Nintendo to go out all on this one. The NX needs to be a success. Nintendo and Pokémon Co. should collaborate and use the Zelda U engine to make a proper anime style open-world 3D RPG on the NX and the main character shouldn't be named Red, he should be named Ash.