Pokemon isn't my favorite franchise but...

I am ready for some new pokemon!
(I also agree that gen 4 had the worse pokemon)

Not too soon, but i was hopping to see this happening in the next generation only.


But the greedy Nintendo's intentions are more than disclosed. The more crap load of money the better.

Haha, that's awesome. Yeah, I very much hope so.

I might have said this before, but one of the fundamental problems with Gamefreak's approach to their games is that they assume the highest possible level of interest on the player's part--so we get post-Elite 4 content that really requires a lot of dedication to Pokemon to properly appreciate.

While the fact of the matter is that there ARE a lot of people who are dedicated enough to Pokemon that this is enough, I really wish they'd include more content that was designed to hook and engage players who have a harder time devoting hundreds of hours to raising a perfect team.

Imagine an open-world, non route-driven Pokemon--almost Metroidesque in that it you have to craftily explore a sprawling world in order to find all the secrets, pokemon, and so on. 

Gameplay shake-ups like this would go a long way to making the series as obsessively captivating as it ever was.

That's one minor bit of evidence weighing for it, while there is a lot more evidence weighing against it.

Besides the far more important "WE DO NOT COMPETE AGAINST OURSELVES BECAUSE THAT = MILLIONS OF LOST SALES" argument, you've also got the fact that new generations of PKMN have always come out on newer hardware capable of providing superior visuals. That hasn't happened yet. In fact, the DS is nearing the end of its lifetime as the primary Nintendo handheld (it'll still be supported likely all the way into 2020 and beyond, though). It simply wouldn't make sense for Nintendo to release a flagship game in a franchise so dependant on its legs when they clearly intend to release the next generation of hardware so soon.

Additionally, the hardware situation weighs against it in another way. Suppose they DID release the 5th-gen PKMN title on the DS in September or October. They'll be releasing the next Nintendo handheld no later than the end of next year - and they may announce it THIS year. After all, they HAVE made statements about the next generation handheld, and they don't do that very long before officially announcing them. With so little time between game's release and the new hardware's release, what would they do with the rest of the generation's titles? They'd only be releasing the 5th-gen MAIN PAIR on the DS, while all of the other games - Ranger, Mystery Dungeon, Yellow/Crystal/Emerald/Platinum-type game - would be on the DS's successor. Either that, or released on inferior hardware, which again goes against Nintendo's non-self-competitive stance.

No, friend, it makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever.

@ Person above me:
DSi is to DS
what
Gameboy Color was to original Gameboy.
It'll probably be a DSi enhanced game--with additional features only available on DSi: an incentive to upgrade for all DSi owners.

Which is EXACTLY the same as Gold/Silver (as they were playable on the original gameboy).

So there is precedent.
Also: By the time they come out in JAPAN, HG/SS will have been out for a year. Not really competing against themselves at that point.

Most importantly, you base your entire (uneven) argument on the assumption that the DS's succesor will be out in 2011. This is much more of a stretch than believing that Gamefreak is completing a new generation of Pokemon. 

That also shows that the next nintendo handheld won't be coming for awhile. Since the dsi is to the ds what gbc was to the gb, thay will use this new poemon game to enticve people to upgrade (they will probably make the new game playable on the old ds's, but it's dsi features would be disabled). i think nintendo intends to have the dsi out for at least a couple years before they release their next hardware.

would you like to argue the dsi it then new gba micro or something?

DSi doesn't relate to the DS at all like the GBC did to the Gameboy. Not in the least. You can't make that comparison at all. I already said it, even - the DSi doesn't add any technical capabilities whatsoever. No extra graphical capabilities at all. It adds a freakin' camera. What can that honestly present to an actual full new generation of Pokemon?

As for the next handheld, like I said, they're already making statements about it to the public, with over 18 months until the likely release date. That's a LOT of time. By that expected release date, the DS will be seven years old. It's incredibly doubtful that they'll continue prolonging the DS's life beyond that for an entire year. That would make the DS eight years old at its replacement, and it would put the DS replacement's release in dangerous proximity to the release of the Wii's successor - which is gonna come out in 2012 or 2013 (and both of those dates leave 2012 as way too close for comfort). No, it's an incredible stretch to think Nintendo would actually put it off and allow their tech to become stagnant and old, thus causing their stock values to plummet. It's a simple matter of marketing and analysis.

And you're basing YOUR argument on Japan's market that is of incredibly inferior size. So they won't be competing with themselves in Japan. How about the rest of the world? The other 95 million DS owners. They can avoid self-competing with them by holding off the Western release until mid-2011... which actually may work, but it's awfully risky. And you're still ignoring the rest of the 5th Generation's games - the spinoffs and continuations. What would they do with those games? Unless they intend to release the DS's successor the same way they did the DS - as a "third tier" - and still put all those games on the DS while supporting its successor at the same time, it just wouldn't work. Period.

No, it's going to be another 4th gen title. Although, I WOULD be willing to wager that it may be more of a "mid-gen" concept - something that connects the 4th gen to the 5th gen and introduces some new stuff to tie us off. The timing just isn't right for introducing something entirely new that should be supported on this platform for the next three to four years, so introducing something that leads into that new platform would be ideal. I don't disagree on it utilizing the DSi's features, but you guys are simply missing a major part of market strategy in your predictions here.

Uh, that was exactly my point. Did you read my post? Or the one above it I was responding to?

@thetonestarr: doesn't matter. The DSi can still have DSi only cartridges, so it can function in the same way as the GBC did to GB. Also, it does have faster processors/more onboard memory.

The DS is still selling. Next handheld will come out when sales slow, not because the DS will "have been out almost seven years". Time is immaterial when sales are high.

As for the rest-of-world market, the games likely wouldn't be out until March 2011 in other regions--a full year after HG/SS.

This is really not the implausible scenario you're treating it as at all.