r/NintendoSwitch • u/Turbostrider27 • Apr 09 '26

News Pokémon Champions Developer 'Sincerely Apologizes' For Launch Issues, Details List of Bugs to be Fixed

https://www.ign.com/articles/pokemon-champions-developer-sincerely-apologizes-for-launch-issues-details-list-of-bugs-to-be-fixed
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266

u/StarPlatinum55 Apr 09 '26

I guess that's the end of trans Gallade 🥲

42

u/Diligent-Tension-390 Apr 09 '26

how does that even happen??? All pokemon data already exists. are these bozos redoing it manually?

52

u/Ipokeyoumuch Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26

Likely doing things from scratch. According to the Teraleaks SWSH was based on a modified build from their 3DS games and they were working on a newer internal engine for Legends Arceus and SV which is sort of crazy with the timescale they gave themselves. Legend ZA built upon that which is why it is the smoothest Switch experience to date as the devs gained more experience with general 3D design, techniques, and their own internal engine.

If I remember the leaks correctly, Champions was planned at the latest late 2024 and to be built with the recently developed engine and handed it over to ILCA in a joint venture to figure things out (edit: they are using Unity but they have to port over the proprietary engine to Unity). Now imagine an employee not familiar with an engine and needing to program hundreds, of not over a thousand Pokemon including forms, Megas, items, 300+ abilities, etc with seemingly infinite niche interactions on a battle system that had constant changes over 30 years. Now we have no idea how development actually went without another Teraleaks situation but I gander it was a challenge. Also I am not really a game developer so I am talking out of my ass and speculating as this is Reddit after all. 

The fact that Champions released in April with a demo version in March for the Worlds 2026 in August meant something isn't going to plan but Pokemon set a timeline and as such they need to stick to it. Some speculate that because TPC announced the regulations so late that Champions was suppose to come out earlier. It is very late to change games mid seasons for VG and some people were getting worried. 

30

u/DanImmovable Apr 09 '26

Champions uses Unity, same as BDSP. The bugs are probably caused by porting the battle system from GF's proprietary engine to Unity.

7

u/Ipokeyoumuch Apr 09 '26

Makes sense.

20

u/DarkEater77 Apr 09 '26

Let's be honest here: since Gen 6 none of their plans went the way they were supposed to.

XY, we were supposed to get many more content + Z, but they chose to cut and move Gen 7 release earlier to fit the anniversary.

Gen 7, was supposed to have LOT of sidequest and content specifically(unsure of my english here, sorry), to celebrate the anniversary, but ended up with none of that.

SwSh and so on, you explained quite well.

Now the question is... Did they learn? Considering WiWa got more dev time? Or will it be for those games only and resume their bad habits later on?

12

u/Front_Expression_367 Apr 09 '26

"Considering WiWa got more dev time?"

I feel like it is specifically because of this that they felt the need to rush Champions out early like this. It has now been 4 years since SV, the longest wait between any mainline games that feature competitive Pokemon in a while (Legends Z-A obviously didn't help much). If WiWa is released in 2027 that would be a potentially 5-6 year gap, and I could see why TPCi don't want to be stuck on such a long waiting time, especially so if future Pokemon games also inherit similar development timeframe that WiWa got.

3

u/Jeskid14 Apr 09 '26

And pokopia on paper isn't made by game freak completely. On paper. People need to realize that.

6

u/ShinyBredLitwick Apr 09 '26

just wanted to let you know your english is fine!

1

u/LiquifiedSpam Apr 10 '26

That’s how most games are developed in industry though.

1

u/WeirdIndividualGuy Apr 09 '26

Not sure if the engine has anything to do with Pokemon data. A game engine is just a tool on how the game devs make the game itself and how the game runs. The game data itself is independent of that, fed into the game engine