The real reason for Game Freak's choice of visuals.

[Shiken]

Now before I begin, let me make it clear that this is not me saying the game does not have its flaws or that this revalation makes everything ok.  This is specifically about the choice to keep the visuals at a small step forward rather than the giant leap some people were expecting.

Now most of my time with Sword, I have been playing docked over the weekend (having a blast).  Now that it is monday and I am on the go again due to my job, I noticed something this morning.  The battery life of my BASE model launch Switch burned less than 30% of the battery life after about an hour and fifteen minutes.  In fact, some very rough tracking puts it around 4 hours or more if you ran it dry.  This is a far cry from the 2 hours and 40 min I get from games like Witcher 3 on the go, before I break out my portable battery pack that is.  And that is when it hit me...and something everyone either overlooked or chose to ignore became so obvious...

Pokemon has always been a portable franchise.  Nothing has changed with this release, which is only supported by the timing of the Switch Lite.  With that in mind, battery usage must have been on their mind when making the game.  Instead of sacrifices to the battery life being made for better visuals on the go, they chose to optimize battery life instead and keep the franchise what it has always been...a portable experience.  4 hours on a launch model is the low end of this choice, as the new model and the Lite will have even more time available before draining completely.

And this is something I feel we need to keep in mind as more 3DS IPs come to Switch.  The Switch is a HYBRID.  We will have those console experiences on the go, but many fans still want those Link's Awakening and Pokemon style experiences on the go to remain as portable as possible.  Some people prefer the simple gameplay those games offer.  Since the Switch now harbors Nintendo's handheld AND console games, one should not automatically expect that devs will cut out the user base that orefered handheld games just for the sake of bringing EVERYTHING to console level.  It would ultimately be a very risky business move, and might push away the people that primarily played on handhelds.

So what do you all think, could this have been a massive oversight on console gamer's part?  Or should we just say screw that noise and phase everything into console caliber games, regardless of the roots of an IP and the fanbase that has supported it.

Again, this has nothing to do with other debatable topics regarding the game.  So please keep that out of it and stay focused on the choice to use this visual direction for the games, and what to expect as future handheld IPs come to Switch.