Game Freak Says Pokemon Games Are Split Late In Development

During a Game Informer interview with Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori, the developers were asked how Pokemon games are developed since they are always released in pairs.

According to Masuda, Pokemon games are usually developed as one single version in the first half of development, and then they are split in the latter half. That’s also when they decide which Pokemon and features are exclusive to each version.

The convention is not always followed, though, as Pokemon Let’s GO Pikachu/Eevee were split very early in development.

See their full comments below:

Since Pokémon games are always released in pairs, at what point in development does the team go from developing one executable to two executables?
Masuda: They obviously share the same underlying systems, so throughout the early part of development, when we’re developing those core systems, it’ll be a single version. It’s really when we start getting into more of which Pokémon appear in which game, and kind of the data table stuff, where they split into two different versions where we have to manage both versions.

So it seems that it’s fairly late in the process?
Masuda: Yeah. Definitely the latter half of development. In terms of the conceptual phase, we always start with two versions in mind, but then in development, you’re building the core systems first and then splitting it up. It also depends on the project. Like, the Let’s Go, Pikachu and Eevee games were split much earlier in development than these ones for example.

Of course, it can actually be problematic sometimes because the team, when we’re test-playing the games internally before we actually go into the formal debug process, people have their favorites for which version. For example, for Let’s Go, Pikachu and Eevee, a lot of the team preferred Eevee, and they’d always be playing that, and that would be more polished and in a better state. For the Pikachu version, we had to kind of then make up for lost time later on. What about Sword and Shield? You probably have more people playing Sword, right? Do you have more bugs in Shield? [Laughs]

Ohmori: [Laughs] No, no! They’re both good!

Masuda: In the end, we do focus on debugging both versions the same, but when you first do that split, there’s definitely some internal favoritism that can create some lopsidedness.

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