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Pokémon Day 2026 - Pokemon Winds and Waves coming 2027! Champions April 2026

Personally I’m glad they are taking another year to complete WW.
It’s sad now, but in the future you’ll appreciate it more. Just like how Smiling Friends being over would be better than continuing have the show decline, Pokemon taking more time to develop the game is better than them rushing it.
 
I don’t think we know who’s directing Winds and Waves just yet but if it’s Shigeru Ohmori’s team again, I think the 2027 release window can be explained with the initial delays of the Switch 2 and Legends Z-A. According to the end credits of the Z-A base game, Ohmori worked as Senior Director for that game alongside the quote “regular director” and I have reason to believe there may have been some kind of merger between the Legends team and Ohmori’s team.

If we’re to believe Winds and Waves will launch late 2027, that would mean Ohmori’s team would have a two-year development cycle which would line up with that of games like Sword & Shield (2017-19) and Scarlet & Violet (2020-22). The trend looks something like this during Ohmori’s tenure:

-Two years for the development of the base game
-Up to one year for development of a DLC or upper version (USUM)
-Game Freak’s B Team handles things like Let’s Go, Legends Arceus, and Legends Z-A pre-merger (2023)

Following the conclusion of development on Paldea’s DLC, I think the Switch 2’s delays and what was happening with the Pokémon Legends series pushed what was supposed to be a 2024 release back to 2025, which in turn pushed back what was supposed to be a 2026 game to 2027. I had a feeling something like this could happen and even told my friends online “there’s no way Ohmori could finish work on Gen 10 in just one year” (2025-26). I thought maybe we would have a late 2026 release date for Winds and Waves if another person was in charge of the product but a 2027 release date suggests it was most likely still Ohmori’s project.
 
I forgot how a Battle Pass system works. How is it even implemented into the game?

Cosmetics ARE game mechanics.

I watched the presentation. I didn’t care for it but find it’s a waste of my time to be scornful.
 
Chico the Parakeet said:
I forgot how a Battle Pass system works. How is it even implemented into the game?

Cosmetics ARE game mechanics.

I watched the presentation. I didn’t care for it but find it’s a waste of my time to be scornful.
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usually you gather points by doing certain tasks the game assigns, and there'll be a free side and a paid side. the free side rewards are given to everyone, and the paid side are only for those who buy the battle pass. I am not sure if pokemon will have a mirrored free pass or just a paid one though
 
"The east has fallen. Billions must faint."

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QuickBH said:
Pokemon Champions has a battle pass system. All my hype for this game has been gone.

I assumed that they would just have this game as a means to incentivize buying the newer games and mandate a HOME subscription if you don't want to play with rentals. This is much, much worse.
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I have mixed feelings on a battle pass myself. On one hand these sorts of games are usually made worse by these sorts of monthly transactions. With FOMO constantly employed in order to keep people opening their wallets month after month.

On the other hand I do understand the fear of making a game like this, the Pokemon company and Game Freak WANT people to play their games. They want people to play ZA, they want people to play SV, and they will want people to play WiWa. My theory about Blood Moon has always been that it exsists to make sure compltative players don't do that thing where they just get to the first Pokemon center and have someone else just trade in the mons needed for competative. I'm not sure how well that solved that issue but that's what I assum they were thinking.
So they probabaly desinged champiouns specificly to reward players like me who play all their games. I don't have to pay VP to recruit if I already have the mons in home, and if I don't I can go catch them. Heck I've played so much ZA ranked I have enough resorces to fully train up my mons, I don't know if EVs will carry over or be reset in champoins, but if they did hold over that would be even less VP I'd have to spend.

But it's always possible the battle pass is poorly designed either way. Items like leftovers or specific mega stones could be locked behind the paid version of the battle pass thus making it so even their most loyal players have to pay them extra money for the privlage of being competative even if they've already shelled out money for every single one of the mainline games. This would be the worst of both worlds and an abject failuer as far as I'm concerned.

I'm willing to give it a try and see how it feels to play, I knew there would be some micro transactions so I've already saved up around 100 dollers to buy things in this game if need be. And with another month to wait I'll probably get that up to 200. But I'll hold onto my money if I feel the games to preditory, and as always we must never be afraid to click that feedback button and tell them how badly they messed up.

Edit: Also it does matter how much the paid battle costs and how offten you have to pay.
 
Was double checking serebii for something and saw a note that caught my eye about permanent recruitment costing 2500 instead of 1000. And that sounded interesting so while checking the site...

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This is still there. It was also the first one we saw when twe found out we could do this last year.

However....later down the page, when it talks about tickets...

p03_02.jpg


Not only does Whimsicott here cost 2500 the entire UI is different. I think they jacked up the prices in the time between they showed the game off lmao
Japan avoided this incongruity by getting rid of the old screens entirely.

Also surprisingly the japanese website doesn't show off the battle pass at all either. I think the only way we know about it is through twitter and the reference to the (Japanese-only) Dragonite gift. Why is the information roll out for this game so segregated


also btw the shop refresh thing is 1 ticket = 1 hour OR spending 5000 VP (I presume the price goes down as time passes) to reroll
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folks i don't think this game is going to do everything people wanted it to do wrt competitive Pokemon. call it a hunch!
 
I mean i did expect this. I don't think pokemon will ever make a product where you can avoid buying or interacting with the main franchise forever, this isnt showdown. I fully expected the rentals to be limited in some way and that 99% of features would need real pokemon you caught and have in box. what i am more interested about is how iv/ev redoing, items and movesets will work, because if those are also extremely limited and youre expected to do all that work inside the games too then champion does really only exist to avoid the lag problem of current matches lol
 
Bakugames said:
I mean i did expect this. I don't think pokemon will ever make a product where you can avoid buying or interacting with the main franchise forever, this isnt showdown. I fully expected the rentals to be limited in some way and that 99% of features would need real pokemon you caught and have in box. what i am more interested about is how iv/ev redoing, items and movesets will work, because if those are also extremely limited and youre expected to do all that work inside the games too then champion does really only exist to avoid the lag problem of current matches lol
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I am fully with you on this not being surprising but also we have some ideas on that other stuff:
They showed that off last year too; it's a bunch of sliders (well, incremented bars with numbers) for EVs and then moves you select from a list. IVs appear to be elevated to max across the board and I don't think anything we've seen today goes against that.
We don't know which movesets they are drawing from, but I will assume it's just SV as a base (with non SV Pokemon I presume given a "what if they were in SV" moveset) until shown otherwise.
Items are mentioned being in a shop in the footnotes of the Mega Stone gifts/battle pass.

But also literally all of this costs VP (or tickets!!) and there's no indication on if any of it has to be rebought (IE: I bought Icy Wind on someone, if I remoev Icy Wind will I have to rebuy it or just place it back).

notes on Home....visitations....say that if you bring over someone from outside Champions that moves that aren't available will have to be trained away. I assume, then, that Champions initially just copies the Pokemon exactly as it is when it first goes into Champions including not just moves but the nature/evs, and then maintains that separately.
There's also the funny footnote that if a Pokemon changes forms it wont remember its training. So be careful with your Hoopas and friends I guess.
 
CynicalGiant said:
every other joke on social media about the fire starter is it becoming fire/fighting...

it has been 5 generations since the last fire/fighting starter, nearly 16 years ago. I need people to get new jokes.
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I don’t care about fire/fighting specifically any more but I hope they move past dark/fighting/ghost as the secondary types. We’ve had those three (plus one instance of psychic and fairy) since XY. Do poison or something you cowards!
 
Bakugames said:
this isnt showdown.
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Should we be worried actually? Imagine if pokemon realizes their sim is inferior to ours and commits a palworld on showdown lol.

Pretty disappointed with battle pass in champions, it was as I feared that important items (such as mega stones) would end up ransomware FOMO for the pass, we kinda saw this coming from ZA but ZA never dropped the mega stones just made them easier each subsequent run, I fear a repeat of sun/moon and I can't powersaves shit in to make that a minor inconvenience i forgot was even a thing.

We're also at the mercy of how they choose to distribute them and how long it takes for them all to get in, who knows how many years it'd take if they drip feed them 1 by 1 (I assume some would be always available at least).
 
CodeFour said:
Have we seen anything to know if champions in anyway supports 6v6 singles
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As someone who dabbles in a few different formats I will probably stick to Showdown for 6v6 singles unless its vs someone I know personally.
Enforcing bans and clauses is just impossible on a wifi format and I don't see any reason to pull my hair out when showdown is sitting in a link on this very website.
I do want to try and play VGC and BSS as well though so those formats I'll probably play on champions. And it kind of looks like some sort of masochist format will be possible with they way Pokémon recruiting works.
 
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