Pokemon Art Director Ken Sugimori Not in Favor of Pokemon Sold as DLC

23rd October, 1 replies

Pokemon, Pokemon X/Pokemon Y, Ken Sugimori, Nintendo, Game Freak, Satoshi Tajiri

With Nintendo recently embracing the idea of downloadable content, it's natural to assume that Pokemon X & Y will soon have DLC. And it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that such DLC would include new Pokemon. However, as art director Ken Sugimori explains in a 4gamer interview (translated by Siliconera), selling Pokemon as DLC is not currently in the cards.

“When it comes to business, the one thing I’ve always said ‘no!’ to is ‘the act of buying Pokémon with money,’” says Sugimori. “That is something that has been said since the days [Satoshi] Tajiri [creator of Pokemon] was completely involved in everything.”

“The reason being, is because it’s one of things [sic] that could ‘ruin the worldview’ of Pokémon...I believe the reason we don’t simply commercialize [Pokémon], is that it’s a way of protecting the brand, and for this purpose, we have the specialty company called The Pokémon Company. Therefore, suppose we sell a Pokémon for 100 yen, then we must prepare something that is worthy of that 100 yen, along with a reasonable consent for doing so."

But what about the popular Pokemon giveaway events that occur at movies or game stores? Sugimori also elaborated on that.

“That plan came to be after we thought ‘now, this is fun’ about the idea of having the experience of a Pokémon who was featured in the movie you just saw, appear out of the big screen,” said Sugimori. “After trying it out, we had plenty of thoughts [on the matter] and it was well received, and we also had a lot to talk about.”

“It’s not that we only want to distribute [Pokémon], but we want to give our customers a taste of a ‘new experience...Whatever we do, we make sure it fits the worldview, and make sure it remains consistent. Those are some of the parts we place a great amount of importance into.”

That said, the idea of selling Pokemon as DLC isn't entirely off-limits.

“If we ever get the idea of ‘this could be fun if we could sell it for real-life money,’ or something similar during the planning of a future game, then perhaps we could sell them for 100 yen," Sugimori stated.

Source:

gamrreview.com/news/90622/…

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