Masaaki Hoshino is a technical director at The Pokémon Company and one of the most veteran figures within the company. Originally a part of Pokémon Yellow‘s development – and later producer on fighter spinoff Pokkén Tournament – he’s helped produce Unite and Champions, too.
Now, he’s given fans a direct answer to criticisms of Pokémon Champions’ lacking visual presentation, though it might not be the one we were hoping for. While chatting with Eurogamer Germany, he said the following: “Yes, as a Pokémon fan, I naturally understand the various discussions currently taking place within the fan community… I can totally relate to all of it. Regarding the graphics and gameplay, we’ve truly tried to do our best in both areas.”
While acknowledging the negative feedback is appreciated, he didn’t initially go into detail of what’s the main reason behind Pokémon Champions’ rough visual edges and rather limited performance, especially on Nintendo Switch 2, where the game looks almost identical to its Switch 1 counterpart and the framerate remains locked to 30 FPS.
Instead, Pokkén was brought up: “I have experience from working on Pokkén Tournament, and one of my goals for that game was actually to make the Pokémon game with the best graphics at the time. And I think we did a good job with that back then. But only two Pokémon were ever visible on screen at the same time. With Pokémon Champions, we have more limitations.” While it’s true Champions has to also run on mobile devices, a turn-based battler sticking to tradition isn’t exactly a heavyweight game for console hardware that’s more than capable of running far more visually complex games.
Chances are Pokémon Champions might be improved in the coming months, at least on Switch 2, but Hoshino defended the team’s work on Champions, highlighting how all the Pokémon now have “their own shadows” and improved “battle effects”. His comments may not help quell the heated debate over the Pokémon series’ ongoing struggle with graphics, but it’s good to know at least some conversations are happening internally.
