Game Freak Director urges the importance of creating non-Pokemon games

Game Freak (the team known mainly for helming the biggest media franchise of all time: Pokemon) have recently stated that they consider making unique games to be vital to their studio. Speaking on their most recent release, Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On for Apple Arcade, Masao Taya expressed that the studio doesn't want to shy away from making non-Pokemon games- despite the popularity of the series. Speaking at an interview with Axios, Tava stated the following:

"We believe that it is very important... to continue making and releasing titles outside of the Pokemon series”

This sentiment has been expressed in the past decade, with the studio pushing out smaller, more unique games in the downtime between their big Pokemon projects. This includes Little Town Hero and Tembo the Badass Elephant, which has given Game Freak more of an opportunity to flex their creative muscles than the infamously rigid Pokemon series. Nintendo is highly protective of its IPs, and with the Pocket Monster franchise amassing over $77.1 billion since its inception in 1996, it’s clear to see why.

The reason that Game Freak is able to put out some of the more bizarre games seen in the industry (as well as being able to release on platforms outside of Nintendo's own) is that Game Freak is actually not owned by Nintendo at all. As shocking as it is, Nintendo only actually owns a controlling share of the company and rights to the Pokemon IP. This means that the studio is completely free to work on whatever they want when they aren't ordered to churn out another generation of Pokemon. It's a good sign, then, that Game Freak pushes for the importance of creating new and interesting games. 

While newer mainline entries in the Pokemon series have become more and more polarizing with each new generation, at least Game Freak as a company still has its creativity intact with other game releases. In another interview with VGC, another Game Freak manager, Masafumi Saito stated the following when asked about their commitment to non-Pokemon releases:

“..it was hard to concentrate on developing original games. Now we work with external companies so that we can start experimenting... We want new titles to come out that are beloved by lots of people across the world like the Pokemon series has been'

If there's one thing to take away from Masao Taya, Masafumi Saito, and Game Freak's statements, it's that weirdly wonderful games like Tembo the Badass Elephant aren't going anywhere any time soon- which is absolutely a good thing.