Nintendo just guaranteed themselves a profitable 2013, as today they announced the latest sequel to their long-running and seemingly perpetually popular Pokemon series.
The latest Pokemon, dubbed the X and Y Versions, will be released worldwide for the 3DS next October. This new generation of Pokemon seems like it’ll bring about lots of changes to the series: in addition to ditching the color-based titles of previous generations, X and Y will also abandon the traditional sprite art that has defined the look of the series so far in favor of fully 3D polygonal graphics. As expected, the new generation will also introduce a slew of new Pokemon, though as usual, Nintendo has so far only revealed the new starters and legendaries.
I’m not sure what I think of the changes: I’m glad that Pokemon’s look is finally evolving, but the new 3D graphics don’t seem like they’re pushing the 3DS’ hardware capabilities in any way, and the 3D models don’t have quite as much personality as Black and White’s animated sprites. Of course, we’ve only gotten a brief look at X and Y, and let’s face it, nobody plays Pokemon for the graphics. If X and Y manage to be as big of an improvement over Black and White as those games were over previous generations, then Nintendo will still definitely have a hit on their hands.
