A number of clues point to the most likely candidate for Pokémon‘s console successor. 

A representative from Game Freak, the development company in charge of the Pokémon series of games, has divulged that Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon will be the last Pokémon RPGs to grace the screens of the Nintendo 3DS. First revealed on a Nintendo Direct online presentation back in June, the newest iterations of the Generation VII games taking place in the Alola Region are currently slated for a November 17 release worldwide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-CBOrLnb0

Shigeru Ohmori, who served as director of Pokémon Sun and Moon, recently told IGN that Game Freak had maximized the full potential of the Nintendo 3DS when developing Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. He stated that they had in fact been pushing the system’s capabilities since the development of Pokémon X and Y, the first Pokémon games to be featured on the 3DS. However, with Sun and Moon, the team had to completely redesign the 3DS system in order to successfully develop the games. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon pushed its limits even further and are consequently being thought of as the pinnacle of their work on the 3DS, which leaves Pokéfans wondering: what comes next?

One doesn’t have to look hard to find the most likely candidate. Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, had announced at E3 2017, just a short time after Ultra Sun and Moon‘s initial introduction to the world, that core series Pokémon RPG games are currently in development for the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo’s hybrid console released earlier this year to critical and financial success. Furthermore, since it was also revealed that only about 80 Game Freak employees were working on the development of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which is half as many as for Sun and Moon, it appears highly likely that the remaining half are busy working on a new generation of core RPG games. If that’s true, players can look forward to seeing what Generation VIII of Pokémon has in store for them–but first remember to order a Nintendo Switch, if you haven’t already!

Source: t011.org via My Game News Flash
Featured image: YouTube/The Official Pokémon YouTube Channel
Top image: Official Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon site