Today marks six weeks since the announcement of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. And, coincidentally, six weeks since we heard anything about the games at all. Save for the odd steel case collectors' edition thingamajig, of course. Meanwhile, we're 17 weeks 3 days away from release (friday Nov. 17). This means that more than a quarter of the pre-release period has already passed since the games were announced. And it is a short pre-release period too, only five months. Usually, games are announced more than half a year before they are released. Up to ten months for new base games. But still, the first month-and-a-half of those five have been in total silence. Nothing to speculate about. Nothing to discuss. Nothing to be excited for.
The lack of news got me slightly annoyed at TPC's marketing, so I had a look at the last time we had a pre-release period for a follow-up game, namely ORAS. And then this post sort of ballooned, so prepare for a long read:
Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were announced on May 7, 2014, with a mostly-worldwide release date on November 21 the same year.
The initial announcement could be boiled down to "Hoenn confirmed!", it only showed the boxart and nothing else. Technically, it teased Primal Groudon/Kyogre, but with nothing else to go on, it was commonly believed that these were just the regular forms drawn in an artistic style for the boxart. And from then on, here's a timeline of (official) announcements:
- A new trailer dropped on May 10. It showed nothing but Groudon and Kyogre activating their (Primal) abilities.
- The first actual trailer was released on June 10. Coincidentally, this was exactly as far from ORAS' release date as the USUM announcement was from its release. However, the ORAS trailer showed a lot more than the USUM announcement did.
- June 11, Mega Sableye was revealed.
- June 12, the Hoenn starters' Megas were revealed.
- Then followed a month of silence. On July 14, Mega Metagross was revealed (coincidy-doo, we're exactly as far from USUM release date today as this was from ORAS' - I daresay we knew a lot more about those games at that point in time than we now do about USUM).
- Another month or silence. Then a rapid series of announcements:
- Mega Altaria, Lopunny, and Salamence revealed on July 10.
- Mega Audino revealed on August 14. The fandom goes "huh?".
- Mega Slowbro on August 16.
- Another month passes. September 14, we get Mega Sharpedo, Camerupt, and Gallade. Primal Groudon and Kyogre are also formally revealed in the same trailer.
- October 2, Mega Rayquaza is revealed. The fandom goes "huh?" again.
- Mega Lati@s step out of the Hall of Fame of Poorly Kept Pokémon Secrets and into the limelight on October 14. Soaring is revealed.
- The ORAS demo is released on October 15 (and is promptly datamined). Mega Glalie and Steelix are revealed.
- The Delta Episode was revealed on November 13.
- The games' last trailer, the animated one, was released on November 20. And then the games were released on the following day, and all the remaining info leaked within hours.
So you see that information was more spread-out, and although the initial period of silence lasted for over a month, it was nowhere as long as the one we're currently experiencing. Then again, we sort of knew the premise of remakes and the geography of Hoenn already, so there was a bit less uncertainty to speculate on both in terms of story and gameplay.
However, you can see that most of the announcements consisted of newly revealed Mega Evolutions. From June 10 to September 14, we got nothing but Megas (maybe some character art, I can't remember). Then there was a month of effective silence, until the demo, and another month until the Delta Epsode was revealed. The YouTube videos I glanced at did not immediately tell me when Mega Pidgeot, Beedrill, or Diancie were revealed, but the conclusion remains the same: ORAS had Megas to show off, so it showed off Megas. All the Megas. And this intensive marketing campaign burned every bit of powder they had; when the games were finally out, it turned out that there was nothing left unannounced. They even threw the entire postgame (the Delta Episode) at us. I can't remember of the makeover of Mauville was shown in the marketing campaign, but if not, it was pretty much the only thing not shown ahead of release (well, that and the lack of a Battle Frontier, which we had hoped for until the bitter end). And TPC got a bit of flak for that, so it is understandable that they might have wanted to hold back some secrets for players to discover in USUM. That means less news to drop in the pre-release period.
And then I realized: "Wait, this whole situation is more comparable to BW2 than to ORAS! The latter were a remake of a known game, the former a follow-up to a pair of base games in the same generation, presumed to be the last of its console generation since it was revealed after the release of a successor console, and basically everything else fits too! Let's scroll back to 2012 to look at BW2's release period!"
...
...
...Holy fudge, TPC was
bad at marketing back then.
We thought that the five-month pre-release period for USUM was short, but it had nothing on BW2. Those games were revealed on February 26, 2012, slated for a release in Japan in June (later turned out to be June 23), less than four months later. Of course, this announement was done at a Japanese kids' show aired exclusively in Japan, at a time of day when most of the Western world was dead asleep. Pokémon fans outside of Japan were at best considered an afterthought in those days, so we got an international announcement the following day. No release date was given until the Japanese release. The Pokémon YouTube channel only revealed information at the announcement, and then the final trailer on June 21, so I had to go to Serebii to find the following news drop dates:
- The initial announcement of February 26/27 only showed Sugimori art of the Kyurem formes on a blank background, and a sentence to the effect of "Pokemon Black and White Versions 2: Coming June/Fall 2012".
- March's CoroCoro gave us boxart of the games. Of course, their mascots had already been shown.
- On March 30, a month and a week after the initial announcement, it was revealed/leaked that the Formes would retain Kyurem's typing and learn Ice Burn/Freeze Shock.
- At some point (I forgot to write down the date when I checked this for a Discord convo earlier today), it was announced that "major news" would be revealed at Pokémon Smash (the aforementioned Japan-exclusive kids show). All they showed was the boxart again.
- Around the same time (possibly at the exact same show), April 9, Japan got the games' release date: June 23.
- April's CoroCoro gave the first batch of actual information on BW2. We got character art of the player character, and what turned out to be Hugh, and possibly a Gym Leader or two.
- April 14 saw the release of the first trailer for the games. This was almost two months after the inital announcement, and a little more than two months before the games were actually released.
- A slightly extended version of the same trailer was shown on April 21. The Pokédex 3D Pro 3DS app was shown at the same time, giving us the first silhouette of what turned out to be Tornadus-T.
- The Therian Formes were revealed in CoroCoro the following month.
- On May 16, the famous animated BW2 trailer was released.
- Two TV trailers were released on June 2 and 6. This is less than three weeks before the release of the games.
- Keldeo Resolute Forme was revealed on June 10.
- The first international trailer was dropped on June 21, just before the Japanese release.
I think this release period was an eye opener for The Pokémon Company, who had presumably intended to keep the game "on the shelf" outside Japan until they had finished the Japanese marketing campaign and release. They had a home market to cater to first, and then the international market later. But the Western fan sites followed the information drips closely, and spread the news to a hungry international fanbase in real-time, even defying time zones. When it was time to market the game in the West, most of the potential customers with the means to follow a marketing campaign had long since heard every bit of news from fan sites, and were busy planning their teams for their first and second playthroughs - if they hadn't already imported the game from Japan.
Anyway, enough nostalgia. I could write several paragraphs on inept marketing with a lot of comparisons to "The Emperor's New Clothes", but they're off-topic here. What we can learn from the BW2 pre-release is that even a short pre-release period can be pretty uneventful. A minimalist announcement, followed two months of absolute quiet, most of the actual information revealed in the final month before release.
What's the important distinction between ORAS and BW2, except for the horrendous marketing strategy? ORAS had marketable, bite-sized content in the form of Mega Evolutions. Some twenty new critters that could be dropped at regular intervals between the announcement and the release, and they filled the time by revealing every single one in the time available, plus the content of the postgame (and Hoopa-U, for good measure). Of course, this is similar to the role played by new Pokémon in the pre-release period of XY and SM. BW2 only had the Therian trio, the Kyurem Formes and the new Keldeo Forme, six creatures in total, of which two were the games' mascots and had to be revealed at the very beginning.
So I think the lack of information from USUM can be interpreted in two possible ways:
1) Like in BW2, they don't have much information to show us, so they wait until the last 2-3 months before release.
2) They have content like in ORAS (obvious candidates: more Alola Forms), but they aren't many enough to last through the entire pre-release period, and/or they don't want to reveal them all ahead of release like they did last time.
I won't make any conclusions at this moment. Either way, I think news will be more frequent from August or September on. At some point, they have to start actually
marketing these games, not just telling loyal fans that they exist. We'd know anyway, but the guys sitting on fences all around the world might not.
