Nah, it's Pokemon X Persona 5, featuring finally the EoS of the pokemon games
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Pokémon Presents - Pokémon Day 2025 - Pokemon ZA Info & Pokemon Champions Announced
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
Obviously this is their way of teasing the long awaited sequel to Hey You, Pikachu! (Pokémon Channel aside) This time, Pikachu can use GameChat to watch you play other games.
EoS?
End of services.
(There is a rolling meme that every time a game does the p5 collab they shut down a month later)
That doesn't even make sense Joker was the first DLC character for Smash Ultimate.
Going to assume many of these games were Live Services (probably gachas), they would have a Persona 5 cross promotions (probably offering something Joker related) but would wrap up soon afterwards for various reasons. Not surprised, ATLUS is now owned by SEGA and they love putting their popular game characters into everything, from the sheer amount of cross promotions they would have done and how live services/gachas have become the game industries latest flash-in-the-pans I'm sure Joker is probably in good company with some other characters who these games get to pry money out of their "customers" wallets (like I wouldn't be surprised if fellow SEGA mascot Sonic (and his friends, atm probably Shadow) and Nier: Automata's 2B also has a similar reputation; though I guess with Joker being a "Phantom Thief" its funnier when he shows up for something that takes in a lot of money and then vanishes).
to note, while I knew of the term "EoS" as "End of Service", I didn't know that what Worldie was talking about hence my asking for clarification (wouldn't be surprised if there's a game out there that abbreviates to "EoS" I just couldn't find). Glad to see I wasn't the only one that didn't catch the joke, makes me feel more confident in thinking that since Pokemon doesn't usually do cross promotions that the joke simply went over our heads as it's nothing I was certainly aware of; would probably have gotten Worldie dozens of likes if they made it on a SEGA fan forum or a Live Service/Gacha Reddit.
So in the context of the joke, it would probably worked better if they made it for say Pokemon Masters EX X Persona 5 (I'm not too familiar with the Persona series, what Pokemon would you think Joker would be paired with? Seems like a Liepard sort of guy).
And just so we remain on topic: 6 Days Remain ( *Giant clock hand moving sound effect* ).
My brothers in arceus that was a meme comment that "people who know will have a giggle at" you don't have to take it seriously
You say that as if Atlus hasn't been owned by Sega for over a decade and just got purchased lmao.
Sonic as an IP has nonexistent popularity in Japan so he's kind of hard to stuff into gachas. Hell, Sonic was barely present on Sega's most successful console in Japan, the Sega Saturn. The lack of popularity over there is probably a big reason why Sega pushes Joker over him.
Also bro use more periods. Goddamn that's a monster of a sentence.
There seems to be a nice amount of buzz around this Presents (I don't think it's going to be anything more than what we.. probably logically expect) but they seem to be putting in a lot of effort to promote it. I'm guessing this will be the "new content" trailer for ZA featuring new megas, so it makes sense that they'd want a lot of eyes on it.
But all I want is a date for XD coming to NSO :(
But all I want is a date for XD coming to NSO :(
Have they been putting in a lot of effort? I mean, they've been promoting it, but seems about the norm. Last presents had the little animations in the whole week leading to it.
I swear every single Presents people claim something huge must be coming because they are promoting it a lot and then get disappointed. There is already part of the fandom claiming we will get BW remakes or a Gen 10 teaser.
New Megaevolutions after a decade are a huge deal. That's all. There will be more obviously, but there is nothing else out of the ordinary for this Presents, it's just the fandom going feral for the 1000th time because apparently a single year without ZA news has scarred it for life or something (same reason why it has generally accepted leaks without any actual credible source or straight out AI images lately).
The 30th anniversary is right next year, even ignoring the teraleak, any truly big deals would probably be saved for then (I can see them going ahead and just re-re-releasing Gen 1 but this time on the Switch given that the 3ds is dead) but I disgress. I don't have many hopes for Champions news yet, let alone what some people are claiming about it releasing right after the Presents, so at most I expect the Orre games in Switch 2 and maaybe if we are very lucky a musical spinoff of some kind?
New Megaevolutions after a decade are a huge deal. That's all. There will be more obviously, but there is nothing else out of the ordinary for this Presents, it's just the fandom going feral for the 1000th time because apparently a single year without ZA news has scarred it for life or something (same reason why it has generally accepted leaks without any actual credible source or straight out AI images lately).
The 30th anniversary is right next year, even ignoring the teraleak, any truly big deals would probably be saved for then (I can see them going ahead and just re-re-releasing Gen 1 but this time on the Switch given that the 3ds is dead) but I disgress. I don't have many hopes for Champions news yet, let alone what some people are claiming about it releasing right after the Presents, so at most I expect the Orre games in Switch 2 and maaybe if we are very lucky a musical spinoff of some kind?
My predictions for the Presents (outside of the obvious mobile stuff) would be:
-Release date for Pokémon XD on Switch Online (either August or September);
-Announcement of a Switch 2 performance patch for either SwSh or PLA dropping before Legends Z-A. PLA deserves it more imo, but SwSh is literally the third best selling game in the series so it'll get one eventually;
-Gameplay deep-dive into Champions alongside a date for the open beta, probably just after Worlds;
-Gameplay deep-dive into Legends Z-A. They'll reveal abour 3 or 4 new Mega Evolutions alongside their respective Trainers in the story.
Also sorry to rain into everyone's parade but that preview is for the opening animation of the Presents. The previous one also had one in the same style.
-Release date for Pokémon XD on Switch Online (either August or September);
-Announcement of a Switch 2 performance patch for either SwSh or PLA dropping before Legends Z-A. PLA deserves it more imo, but SwSh is literally the third best selling game in the series so it'll get one eventually;
-Gameplay deep-dive into Champions alongside a date for the open beta, probably just after Worlds;
-Gameplay deep-dive into Legends Z-A. They'll reveal abour 3 or 4 new Mega Evolutions alongside their respective Trainers in the story.
Also sorry to rain into everyone's parade but that preview is for the opening animation of the Presents. The previous one also had one in the same style.
Did... did you not read any of the posts underneath? I asked the same question two posts below and we had a mini-conversation about it.
It stands for "End of Service".
My brothers in arceus that was a meme comment that "people who know will have a giggle at" you don't have to take it seriously
If you post it its fair game.
The older I get the more time feels compressed.
Is the Sega Saturn, the 30 year old console, really that relevant? Like I feel most people who are purchasing stuff for these Live Services/Gatches wouldn't have been alive or at the very least been babies when it was current.
What probably also isn't helping is that Nintendo did a Donkey Kong Bananza Direct, not many people were expecting much from it, but it was actually pretty beefy showing & telling a lot about the game and genuinely got people excited for it. So I can imagine there's some people who are hoping for the same for this, especially for Legends: Z-A news. That said, DK Bananza was able to do that as they only had the one Direct, the Switch 2's Direct only mentioning of its existence, said Direct was just dedicated to it and was like a month before its release, and the game is out now. Legends: Z-A already had an info dump Direct, and we have a few more months to go before release. And as for other news, I'll go on the limb and say there will probably be some new stuff, but nothing mind blowing (though maybe baffling).
Not saying much, but it seemingly confirmed both Regional Variants and returning characters (some that were unexpected), so I feel those are also noteworthy (Regional Variants in the sense for future implications for Remakes/Spinoffs that take place post Gen games; returning characters for story and general lore).
Come on, you gotta predict one wild card.
I'm still going to push for "Pokemon Workout", their next Pokemon Verb app which is focused on exercise and healthy eating (and you'll be able to learn how certain species of Pokemon keep in shape and their diets).
(Also don't forget Pokemon animations. May get some more news on Season 2 of Concierge, and I think they've released all the other animation stuff they mentioned last time (like that Dragonite News Delivery one). Those are usually interesting fillers)
I mean Sonic's popularity in the west can largely be attributed to the even older Genesis. The comment was to highlight how little he impacted the Japanese audience the one time Sega's consoles made a decent splash over there.
Also, whales are the main target for gachas. Their age doesn't really matter because they are waifu hunters and/or enthusiasts with too much money to burn.
Last edited:
Emma is then revealed to be the new leader of Team Flare, GF making it not-so-subtle she's being mind-controlled by likely Lysandre.
Since the Pokémon Presents is only a day away, I'm going to drop in some last minute predictions specifically about Pokémon Champions since I'm really curious about how that game is going to function as a whole. However, this ended up being rather long, so I've hidden it in spoilers below to keep the page from exploding.
The game itself
How to get Pokémon in Champions?
We have already seen this image on how HOME connectivity is going to work for Champions. Although it is light on details, it does give us some hints on what to expect.
The fine print tells us that the Pokémon obtained in Champions can't be transferred to HOME. This indicates that the Pokémon are not obtained through traditional encounters, and that The Pokémon Company does not want them to leave the game. The obvious guess here would be that these Pokémon are either obtained through a teambuilder, or as rental Pokémon from other players, meaning that they are not really considered "legitimately owned", thus necessitating this restriction.
Curiously, the graph here says that Pokémon are sent, deposited and withdrawn from existing Pokémon titles, but they are only going to "connect" with Champions. This seems a bit strange since my question is that should we not be able to deposit and withdraw Pokémon to Champions as well? My theory is that you actually do not send Pokémon to Champions. Instead, Champions is able to connect to HOME and then "rent" copies of the Pokémon that exist in HOME while the original Pokémon stays in HOME.
As a result, all Pokémon that you can get in Champions, would be rental versions. Either rented from actually pre-existing Pokémon from HOME, or ones created with the teambuilder in Champions, or ones rented from other players similar to the rental teams in the main series games. Of course, in lore the teambuilder is going to be some kind of rental service where you submit that you want a Charizard with perfect IVs and a specific moveset, and coincidentally they happen to have an exact rental version of the specific Pokémon you requested. Or the game could take place in a simulation which is why you can "create" Pokémon out of thin air with its teambuilder.
The part about renting Pokémon from other player here would refer to a similar function that mains series games have where you can rent other people's teams. But here I'm assuming that we could be able to rent the individual Pokémon themselves. Say, I want to use Wolfe's Incineroar and Gothitelle in a team that I have, but I want to try my own Primarina alongside them, so I can rent those two Pokémon from a rental Wolfe has shared, and then use those Pokémon in my teams as I would use any other Pokémon.
How will the teambuilder work?
Which features and Pokémon do we get access to?
What formats will be available and will Champions be the new home of VGC?
With all of this theorizing out of the way, I'm really looking forward to what the game has to offer. There are so many possibilities with an official battle game for Pokémon, and even though some of my predictions were more cynical, I do think that this game is going to be revolutionary for competitive play. And maybe hopefully they'll make 6v6 Singles viable again on cartridge...
The game itself
Because the game will be available on both Switch and mobile, I'm fully expecting it to be free to download. Most mobile games are free, and it would be very difficult to sell the game on mobile if it costed anywhere near what console games normally cost. If it was going to be paid, I'd expect it to be absolutely no more than $20, and with a high chance of the purchase being cross-platform (i.e. if you buy the Switch version, you can get the mobile version for free and vice versa)
Instead the game will feature some other paid features like trainer cosmetics, or maybe a premium version that gives access to more box space or more refined teambuilding functions. I could also see them tying a premium access to HOME subscription.
Instead the game will feature some other paid features like trainer cosmetics, or maybe a premium version that gives access to more box space or more refined teambuilding functions. I could also see them tying a premium access to HOME subscription.
How to get Pokémon in Champions?
We have already seen this image on how HOME connectivity is going to work for Champions. Although it is light on details, it does give us some hints on what to expect.
The fine print tells us that the Pokémon obtained in Champions can't be transferred to HOME. This indicates that the Pokémon are not obtained through traditional encounters, and that The Pokémon Company does not want them to leave the game. The obvious guess here would be that these Pokémon are either obtained through a teambuilder, or as rental Pokémon from other players, meaning that they are not really considered "legitimately owned", thus necessitating this restriction.
Curiously, the graph here says that Pokémon are sent, deposited and withdrawn from existing Pokémon titles, but they are only going to "connect" with Champions. This seems a bit strange since my question is that should we not be able to deposit and withdraw Pokémon to Champions as well? My theory is that you actually do not send Pokémon to Champions. Instead, Champions is able to connect to HOME and then "rent" copies of the Pokémon that exist in HOME while the original Pokémon stays in HOME.
As a result, all Pokémon that you can get in Champions, would be rental versions. Either rented from actually pre-existing Pokémon from HOME, or ones created with the teambuilder in Champions, or ones rented from other players similar to the rental teams in the main series games. Of course, in lore the teambuilder is going to be some kind of rental service where you submit that you want a Charizard with perfect IVs and a specific moveset, and coincidentally they happen to have an exact rental version of the specific Pokémon you requested. Or the game could take place in a simulation which is why you can "create" Pokémon out of thin air with its teambuilder.
The part about renting Pokémon from other player here would refer to a similar function that mains series games have where you can rent other people's teams. But here I'm assuming that we could be able to rent the individual Pokémon themselves. Say, I want to use Wolfe's Incineroar and Gothitelle in a team that I have, but I want to try my own Primarina alongside them, so I can rent those two Pokémon from a rental Wolfe has shared, and then use those Pokémon in my teams as I would use any other Pokémon.
How will the teambuilder work?
The idea of a Showdown-like teambuilder in an official Pokémon game may seem unthinkable, but I am personally very confident that we will get one in Champions. In lore it will be expained as a rental service, or that it's a computer generated simulation to bypass the whole you gotta bond with Pokémon theme that the overall franchise has.
The reason why I think the teambuilder has to exist in Champions, instead of requiring people to build their mons in main series games and then transfer over to Champions, is accessibility for all players. As we see in the previous image, The Pokémon Company expects people transfer their Pokémon from GO to Champions, which would be completely illogical given how unoptimized they will be for any competitive play. So there should logically be some kind of tool to edit the Pokémon you send into the game, so that even players who may have been introduced to the series by GO can still participate in equal terms.
Will the teambuilder actually allow you to create a Pokémon from this air? I've gone with the assumption that it could, but it's not impossible that the only Pokémon you can use are the ones you have supplied yourself, or gotten as rental copies from other players. So that remains to be seen.
As for what you can do with the teambuilder, there are a lot of functions that absolutely need to be in it.
1. We need to be able to set held items for Pokémon.
2. We need to be able to get the fused forms of Calyrex, Kyurem and Necrozma (as they can't be transferred through HOME in a fused state)
3. We need to be able to apply PP Ups (as moves like Astral Barrage and other fused form exclusive moves don't get PP Up benefits until after the fusion is completed)
The above functions are the absolute bare minimum that the teambuilder has to allow us to do. Everything else could theoretically be done in main series games beforehand. However, as I already mentioned before, GO players who don't have main series games might still want to access the game so they would need a fair bit more robust teambuilder than that.
At least with the following features:
1. Hyper Training for IVs
2. EV training
3. Customizing moves
4. Customizing natures
5. Customizing abilities
6. Customizing Tera types (as well as max level and Gmax factor if dynamaxing is in the game)
It would be unprecedented to give the players this much control over a Pokémon's qualities in a Pokémon game which is why many people have been doubtful about how much customization we are going to have access to. However, I do believe we are going to get all of the above, though with certain potential restrictions. Here are my theories on the matter:
1. You are not editing actual Pokémon
This point brings us back to what I mentioned before about you "renting" copies of your Pokémon rather than fully transferring them. If the Pokémon that we get access to in Champions are just rental Pokémon that can not be transferred out of the game, then it would make sense for The Pokémon Company to give us full access to extremely robust customization. Those edited Pokémon can't be brought back into the main Pokémon game ecosystem so they can be modified without any major restrictions.
2. The teambuilder could be paywalled
I theorized that the game is going to be free-to-play with some microtransactions or a premium plan. Well, this is one aspect of how the game could fund itself. Players only get access to a more robust teambuilder if they pay for the premium. F2P players could still play the game but they would have to supply their own pre-trained Pokémon from other games, or maybe use exclusively rentals from other players (if those are not paywalled). This would be rather cynical way of doing it, but The Pokémon Company has to monetize this game somehow and I could see this being the case.
3. Maybe they'll make us grind for it, just like in main series games
Winning battles could give you Battle Points, and you can use those points to buy Bottle Caps, Ability Capsules and Nature Mints. As much as we hope for a convenient Showdown-like teambuilder, there's always a way for The Pokémon Company to come up with some arbitrary restrictions as they always do.
The reason why I think the teambuilder has to exist in Champions, instead of requiring people to build their mons in main series games and then transfer over to Champions, is accessibility for all players. As we see in the previous image, The Pokémon Company expects people transfer their Pokémon from GO to Champions, which would be completely illogical given how unoptimized they will be for any competitive play. So there should logically be some kind of tool to edit the Pokémon you send into the game, so that even players who may have been introduced to the series by GO can still participate in equal terms.
Will the teambuilder actually allow you to create a Pokémon from this air? I've gone with the assumption that it could, but it's not impossible that the only Pokémon you can use are the ones you have supplied yourself, or gotten as rental copies from other players. So that remains to be seen.
As for what you can do with the teambuilder, there are a lot of functions that absolutely need to be in it.
1. We need to be able to set held items for Pokémon.
2. We need to be able to get the fused forms of Calyrex, Kyurem and Necrozma (as they can't be transferred through HOME in a fused state)
3. We need to be able to apply PP Ups (as moves like Astral Barrage and other fused form exclusive moves don't get PP Up benefits until after the fusion is completed)
The above functions are the absolute bare minimum that the teambuilder has to allow us to do. Everything else could theoretically be done in main series games beforehand. However, as I already mentioned before, GO players who don't have main series games might still want to access the game so they would need a fair bit more robust teambuilder than that.
At least with the following features:
1. Hyper Training for IVs
2. EV training
3. Customizing moves
4. Customizing natures
5. Customizing abilities
6. Customizing Tera types (as well as max level and Gmax factor if dynamaxing is in the game)
It would be unprecedented to give the players this much control over a Pokémon's qualities in a Pokémon game which is why many people have been doubtful about how much customization we are going to have access to. However, I do believe we are going to get all of the above, though with certain potential restrictions. Here are my theories on the matter:
1. You are not editing actual Pokémon
This point brings us back to what I mentioned before about you "renting" copies of your Pokémon rather than fully transferring them. If the Pokémon that we get access to in Champions are just rental Pokémon that can not be transferred out of the game, then it would make sense for The Pokémon Company to give us full access to extremely robust customization. Those edited Pokémon can't be brought back into the main Pokémon game ecosystem so they can be modified without any major restrictions.
2. The teambuilder could be paywalled
I theorized that the game is going to be free-to-play with some microtransactions or a premium plan. Well, this is one aspect of how the game could fund itself. Players only get access to a more robust teambuilder if they pay for the premium. F2P players could still play the game but they would have to supply their own pre-trained Pokémon from other games, or maybe use exclusively rentals from other players (if those are not paywalled). This would be rather cynical way of doing it, but The Pokémon Company has to monetize this game somehow and I could see this being the case.
3. Maybe they'll make us grind for it, just like in main series games
Winning battles could give you Battle Points, and you can use those points to buy Bottle Caps, Ability Capsules and Nature Mints. As much as we hope for a convenient Showdown-like teambuilder, there's always a way for The Pokémon Company to come up with some arbitrary restrictions as they always do.
Which features and Pokémon do we get access to?
Another interesting snippet from the promotional material is that not all Pokémon will be available in Champions, at least at release. While that is not necessarily an unexpected turn of events, given that Dexit has been reality for six years now, it still seems strange that a Pokémon game that exists outside of the mains series bubble as a seemingly a hub for all competitive battling is not going to support all Pokémon.
My theory is that at launch Champions will support around 200 Pokémon as its own "regional dex". After that, new Pokémon will be patched in every few months little by little. There will be a constant trickle of new Pokémon as "content" that is used as incentive for people to keep playing. This would also serve as a way of rotating formats in the game. Just like in main series VGC, every few months there is a new regulation with a different set of Pokémon available, and the meta is different for each format. I could also see major features or gimmicks being rolled out gradually over time. We know Megas and Terastal will be available in the game, but Z-moves and Dynamax will probably be added in as a later update.
Though, I do wonder how moves and move legality is going to work. We have Pokémon coming in from SV, SS, PLZA, PLA, BDSP and the 3DS games and they all have their own move legalities to worry about. Do we get to keep the moveset they come in with, even including obscure and ancient event moves like Wish Chansey? I doubt they would allow that. But at the same time, even just the Switch games have inconsistencies on what moves are available at what point. For example, the move Dual Chop is available in SS but not in SV. And the move Ice Ball is available in PLA but not in SS or SV. And what about Hail/Snowscape; how will that mess be resolved? How about Tera Blast; will some Pokémon not be able to use Terastalization to its fullest because they did not happen to be in SV?
Considering all of these move related conflicts, I feel like The Pokémon Company is just going to wipe the movesets of the Pokémon brought to Champions and just have us reteach those moves through its teambuilder, using custom move legality that is mostly faithful to the main series games, but with some added caveats to account for cases like Tera Blast needing to be added to a lot more Pokémon's movepools.
My theory is that at launch Champions will support around 200 Pokémon as its own "regional dex". After that, new Pokémon will be patched in every few months little by little. There will be a constant trickle of new Pokémon as "content" that is used as incentive for people to keep playing. This would also serve as a way of rotating formats in the game. Just like in main series VGC, every few months there is a new regulation with a different set of Pokémon available, and the meta is different for each format. I could also see major features or gimmicks being rolled out gradually over time. We know Megas and Terastal will be available in the game, but Z-moves and Dynamax will probably be added in as a later update.
Though, I do wonder how moves and move legality is going to work. We have Pokémon coming in from SV, SS, PLZA, PLA, BDSP and the 3DS games and they all have their own move legalities to worry about. Do we get to keep the moveset they come in with, even including obscure and ancient event moves like Wish Chansey? I doubt they would allow that. But at the same time, even just the Switch games have inconsistencies on what moves are available at what point. For example, the move Dual Chop is available in SS but not in SV. And the move Ice Ball is available in PLA but not in SS or SV. And what about Hail/Snowscape; how will that mess be resolved? How about Tera Blast; will some Pokémon not be able to use Terastalization to its fullest because they did not happen to be in SV?
Considering all of these move related conflicts, I feel like The Pokémon Company is just going to wipe the movesets of the Pokémon brought to Champions and just have us reteach those moves through its teambuilder, using custom move legality that is mostly faithful to the main series games, but with some added caveats to account for cases like Tera Blast needing to be added to a lot more Pokémon's movepools.
What formats will be available and will Champions be the new home of VGC?
We know from the website that there will be Ranked Battles, Casual Battles and Private Battles available, and they describe that "a variety of different modes [are] available". This does not tell us much about how many formats will be available or if we will be able to customize rules to some extent. So only thing we can do is speculate.
Although Single Battles were not shown in the trailer, I'm confident they will be in the game as well. Battle Stadium Singles is a reasonably popular format in Japan and its online ladder has been equally active as the Doubles ladder. This is likely because the main series games are so Singles focused during their main campaign that people are just more accustomed to that and, therefore, there is a high demand for it even if the Doubles format is the official competitive format.
I would assume that at least in the Private Battles they would allow some control over the ruleset. Though, knowing the past track record of these things, even basic options like customizing the timer have not been conveniently editable. If they don't let us get rid of the 20 minute timer now, they'll probably never will. Though, SV does give us the option to do that but only in custom tournaments for some reason. So we'll have to see.
As for if Champions can become the next home of VGC, it would have to release in the not too distant future. They will certainly want PLZA to be in the spotlight for now, so it is highly unlikely to come before it, or even during the immediate weeks after PLZA. However, I could see early 2026 being a somewhat reasonable timeframe for ti to release. But even then, most of the official VGC tournaments should still take place in Scarlet and Violet. I don't expect them to migrate the tournaments to Champions on a short notice.
So maybe they could do something like this:
Release Champions in January of 2026. The official VGC tournaments during the winter and early spring will still remain in SV, with Regulation I being the main format at the time. Champions will exist in the background with its own separate format for the time being. Then, around April/May the official tournaments will transition to using Champions as their game, and this will remain in place until the 2026 Worlds. That way, everyone would get to have a few months of practice with Champions before the tournaments migrate over to it, which would make the transition smoother.
Although Single Battles were not shown in the trailer, I'm confident they will be in the game as well. Battle Stadium Singles is a reasonably popular format in Japan and its online ladder has been equally active as the Doubles ladder. This is likely because the main series games are so Singles focused during their main campaign that people are just more accustomed to that and, therefore, there is a high demand for it even if the Doubles format is the official competitive format.
I would assume that at least in the Private Battles they would allow some control over the ruleset. Though, knowing the past track record of these things, even basic options like customizing the timer have not been conveniently editable. If they don't let us get rid of the 20 minute timer now, they'll probably never will. Though, SV does give us the option to do that but only in custom tournaments for some reason. So we'll have to see.
As for if Champions can become the next home of VGC, it would have to release in the not too distant future. They will certainly want PLZA to be in the spotlight for now, so it is highly unlikely to come before it, or even during the immediate weeks after PLZA. However, I could see early 2026 being a somewhat reasonable timeframe for ti to release. But even then, most of the official VGC tournaments should still take place in Scarlet and Violet. I don't expect them to migrate the tournaments to Champions on a short notice.
So maybe they could do something like this:
Release Champions in January of 2026. The official VGC tournaments during the winter and early spring will still remain in SV, with Regulation I being the main format at the time. Champions will exist in the background with its own separate format for the time being. Then, around April/May the official tournaments will transition to using Champions as their game, and this will remain in place until the 2026 Worlds. That way, everyone would get to have a few months of practice with Champions before the tournaments migrate over to it, which would make the transition smoother.
With all of this theorizing out of the way, I'm really looking forward to what the game has to offer. There are so many possibilities with an official battle game for Pokémon, and even though some of my predictions were more cynical, I do think that this game is going to be revolutionary for competitive play. And maybe hopefully they'll make 6v6 Singles viable again on cartridge...
Not sure how I would feel about Lysandre coming back.
On the one hand, he's kind of a shitty villain.
But on the other hand, he is basically (somehow less shitty) Elon Musk and the commentary could potentially be really really funny.
Lysandre had his hands in several tech pies but his flavor of insane billionaire didn't feel very Musk, imo.
I think if he came back it would be pretty nice if they decided to take a second run they were clearly desiring considering how Lysandre has been portrayed in everything else. But I suppose being a Zombie would probably rearrange some priorities.
Seeing how excited you are is making me want her too just so I can be happy for you, but I kind of want to see how disappointed you'll be if she isn't. :P
I don't see how the character XY's post game story is focused on wouldn't be in this game, so I'm sure she'll be revealed sooner or later. (Unless Game Freak wants to troll you and wait until the game comes out even though she's probably the woman on the game's box.)
Somehow? I think you're underestimating how hard it is to make someone that bad.
Sorry, but I have to say this. Don't get your hopes up.
(Feel free to gloat if I'm wrong.)
The main problem with Lysandre is "the compromise" they did with him & Team Flare to try and make a villain team that's both wacky but super serious. They wanted Lysandre to have gone down a rabbit hole where he became paranoid about overpopulation causing a resource crisis, specifically noting selfish people would horde as much resources for themselves letting many suffer. So he decided he needed to cull the human population to those who think were worthy as well as kill every single Pokemon as they were a "resource" too easily misused. Serious stuff... Or would have had the goals of Team Flare matched. As oppose to Lysandre, Team Flare is a rich kids club where they don't need to pretend they care about anyone anymore because they think they're going to become immortal at the expanse of 99% of the human population and all Pokemon. The Team Flare grunts are basically the selfish people whom Lysandre bemoaned would hog all the resources... yet those are the ones he's letting live? And most people would say "that's the point" and what Lysandre believes but is doing is supposed to make him a hypocrite; but just the way they set it up I don't feel that lands at least in a believable way.
And if they bring Lysandre back that's going to be an issue that's going to hang there whether they address it or not. If they want Lysandre to have any sort of depth to be taken seriously they would have to find a way to address the hypocritical belief/action; though they need to do a really good job otherwise is just going to dig him into a bigger hole that he made. But if they try to ignore it and end up having Lysandre come up with yet another nutty scheme (which may also have a hypocritical issue) than any guise he's a serious character will be shattered permanently.
The thing about Pokemon Champions is that it sort of has to do all this stuff to possess any value as a product.
There are three theoretical reasons to make a Stadium successor in the current environment. The first is battling with the full National Dex, which we have already been told won't be happening at least for the launch period. The second is majorly enhanced spectacle factor during battles with redone animations and effects; this has also been struck out, what little we've seen looks good but not that good, including the same old animations for the Pokemon. This leaves the third option, a big bump in accessibility. VGC players have been complaining about the byzantine nightmare of getting battle-ready Pokemon for years now, and while improvements have been made it's still clearly not enough - unless you resort to hacking, mainline Pokemon dwarfs just about every other competitive game in terms of prep time. Top level players should be spending the bulk of their time practicing and refining team comps, not grinding for the right IVs.
If Champions cannot ease this burden - in other words, if it expects you to transfer in battle-ready Pokemon from the main series to get the "real" experience just like its predecessors - then why did they bother making it? At that point you're left with "use all the battle mechanics from XY onwards" as the closest thing to a selling point, but I cannot imagine that'll fulfill some vast unanswered demand aside from being a funny gimmick for a couple of months. It's either that or some shockingly high-quality single player content beyond anyone's expectations (I'm talking a Gym Leader Castle equivalent for every mainline region at minimum, but how realistic is that without the National Dex?)