In a recent VG247 interview, Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda commented about the launch schedule for Pokemon games.

In the last few years, Game Freak has been pumping out a new mainline Pokemon game every year, which led many to believe it was done on purpose. Masuda told VG247 that the studio does not intentionally want to release a new game every year, as there are many factors that come in play.

Read his full explanation below:

VG247: The last few years you’ve sort of been doing one of these big games every year – Pokemon has practically been a yearly series. Is that something you plan to continue with?

Junichi Masuda: The first thing that’s kind of important in deciding the future direction is releasing Sword & Shield, it’s seeing the response to that. That’s an important part of where we go in the future. So it’s not necessarily that we’re looking always to release every single year, but each time we go into making a new game and start a new project we look at what exactly we want to create – and then from where we decide the most appropriate timing to release it depending on various factors.

One thing that we always want to keep in mind going forwards is that we want as many people to come in contact with and play Pokemon as possible. We’ve obviously got a lot of long-time fans who have loved the series for a long time, and we definitely want to keep making games that they love. At the same time we always want to draw in new players and make games that are accessible to them. So that’s a really important thing we consider when starting a new project.

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