Pokkén Tournament is the ideal representation of a Pokémon battle: not the orderly, turn-by-turn fights of the mainline games, but the all out, real-time fighting that gets depicted in the anime. First released in arcades in Japan in 2015, and then on the Wii U the following year, the game got a Switch port in 2017 under the name Pokkén Tournament DX. Upon its initial release, Pokkén Tournament received generally positive reviews and even outsold Street Fighter V by the end of April 2016. It also received a nomination for Best Fighting Game at The Game Awards 2016.
So why haven’t we seen a sequel?
Katsuhiro Harada, director on the Tekken franchise and producer of Pokkén Tournament, would certainly like to make another entry in the series. But whether he’ll ever be able to is, unfortunately, not his decision to make. In response to a recent tweet in which he was asked if he considered Pokkén Tournament a “one-time only” thing, Harada replied that, while Bandai Namco has a good relationship with Nintendo and Pokémon Co., Ltd. and he’d like to make another entry, it’s not what Bandai Namco decides, “it’s what they decide.”
We have a good relationship with Nintendo and Pokemon Co., Ltd., and POKKÉN has had a great response, so I would like to make it again.
But it’s not what we decide, it’s what they decide.https://t.co/U8mzxSpWsv— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) January 24, 2021
“They” in this case seems to be referring to Nintendo and Pokémon Co., Ltd., and if you’ve been alive long enough you know exactly how much Nintendo loves to disappoint fans, not give them what they ask for, and let IPs languish and all but die while they do absolutely nothing with them. We’ll see if Harada and Bandai Namco get the opportunity to give the fans another entry in the Pokkén Tournament series, but something tells me the man isn’t holding his breath. Let’s hope Nintendo and Pokémon Co., Ltd. pleasantly surprise us.
Did you enjoy Pokkén Tournament and Pokkén Tournament DX? Would you like to see a new game in the series? Let us know below.
Source: Siliconera
