Everyone expected The Pokémon Company’s big Pokémon Day announcement to be an extended look at the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but the company had a surprise as well: a new multiplayer Pokémon game called Pokémon Champions, a collaboration between Game Freak and The Pokémon Works. Game Freak is the main developer of Pokémon games, while The Pokémon Works is a newer subsidiary of The Pokémon Company.
Pokémon Champions seems to a refocusing of the Pokémon franchise purely on battling. “This new, battle-focused game will feature familiar mechanics such as Pokémon types, Abilities, and moves, creating an environment conducive to rich and varied strategies for new and experienced Trainers alike,” The Pokémon Company said in its YouTube trailer description.
Pokémon Champions will be on “the Nintendo Switch family of systems” and mobile. The game connects with Pokémon Home, so Pokémon can be transferred from Pokémon Go and other Pokémon games. There’s no information yet about the launch date — just that it’s now in development.
Days ahead of the Pokémon Presents event, prolific leaker Pyoro posted a cryptic message on social media: an illustration of a synapse — the place where neurons connect to communicate. If you hadn’t been paying attention to last year’s major Pokémon hack and subsequent leak, this may not have registered as something related to Pokémon. But it was: Some leaked documents referenced something codenamed Pokémon Synapse, created by Game Freak and ILCA, a developer known for its work on Pokémon Home and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl. There weren’t many details confirmed as part of that leak — the most solid piece of information was that it could be a multiplayer game.