The Nintendo Pokémon games have had a lengthy and profitable history, beginning in 1996 with Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green, and continuing on today with the latest release, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The former sold around 31 million copies and was declared the “Best-Selling Videogame,” by the Guinness World Records in 2017. The latter sold around 24 million copies, 10 million of which within the first 3 days of release. However, despite this ostensible success, Nintendo is making a major error.

Back in 2020, Nintendo discontinued the 3DS, one of its older mobile consoles, in favor of the Switch, one of its newer consoles. It then shut down the network in early 2024, essentially blocking all data transfer between games, and online trading from occurring. The 3DS hosted two original games, Pokémon X and Y and Pokémon Sun and Moon, several remakes of older games such as Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, and many mini-games or reskins. The Switch, on the other hand, only has two original main games, one remake, one new style of game, and a couple of mini-games, and there are no plans to make older games playable. With this current setup, there are 6 core Pokémon games that are unavailable to play. While there have been rumors of a new Switch coming in mid-2025, there has been no confirmation that older games will be available on this new Switch.

The only game they pushed forward onto the Switch was Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, renamed to Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. The games did nowhere near as well as the original, and there are several reasons for this. Nintendo made a major change to an important element of the game: the animation style. Rather than the pixelated style that DS owners grew up with, Nintendo instead opted for 3D animation on the Switch, a choice that players ultimately did not like. In addition, a couple of bugs from the original remained in the remake. This could likely be attributed to the fact that it released another game, Arceus Legends, based in the same region around the same time, a game that had considerably more effort put into it. Inevitably, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl did not make as many sales as the original, or as the other core games on the Switch.

Did this drop in sales convince Nintendo to give up on remaking the other core games? While there are no sources confirming this, Nintendo has decided not to add the other games onto the Switch and does not have plans to. It is releasing a sequel to the aforementioned Arceus Legends, based on the region and pokémon from Pokémon X and Y, but with no remake to go along with it. While it may seem like the better financial decision to focus on new Pokémon games due to the lack of boom from its last remake, the thing that truly hurt its ability to appeal to nostalgic fans was its insistence on changing how the game already operated. Fans would have been happy with the exact same game, albeit with some bug fixes, just on the Switch.

There is a clear demand for the older Pokémon games, there are plenty of knockoffs of the Nintendo games online, particularly of Pokémon X and Y. Pokémon X and Y would be a great choice for a remake especially because of its adoration from the fans of the show, often ranked among their top 3 favorite seasons within the Pokémon series. This desire cannot be satiated by the sequel to Arceus Legends due to the extreme differences in gameplay capabilities, namely the switch to an open-world RPG that seems to be more akin to Pokemon Go than the core storyline-based Pokemon games that Nintendo previously released.

All of this boils down to the conclusion that Nintendo is making a major mistake in keeping over ¾ of its Pokémon catalog unplayable. Instead, Nintendo should bring all of its older games into the next generation through a simple calibration for the Switch, and not a complete redesign.