Will Pokemon Champions be Pay-To-Win?
The newest entry in the Pokemon series, Pokemon Champions, is an entry like no other. Being focused completely around competitive battling, it is like if Pokemon Battle Revolution or Pokemon Stadium met Pokemon TCG Pocket. With a game like this, competitive Pokemon is primed to gain popularity, but will the Pokemon Compaany take this chance to monetize the game to bits?
What is Pokemon Champions?
Pokemon Champions is a competitive-first Pokemon battle simulator. It has been designed and built to focus purely on the best part of Pokemon - beating your opponents in head to head battle. Teams will be built from your Pokemon in Pokemon Home as well as likely rental Pokemon.
Thanks to the game being a live-service battler, there will be balanced and streamlined mechanics in these matches, allowing for the competitive experience to be changed independently from the single-player experience. This allows for hardcore gamers to complain about how strong Miraidon is without having to make your Miraidon weaker against NPCs.
Also, Pokemon Champions will receive regular updates, whether that it so add new Pokemon, new battle mechanics, new formats, or even new cosmetics. This is the live-service battler we have all dreamed of, and it is just moments away.
How Monetization Works in Pokemon Champions
While Pokemon Champions is not out yet, we can predict what the monetization will look like. Here is what we think the game will use to profit from your desire to squash your foes:
Cosmetic Purchases
In all popular online games, the first battle is whether your character looks cooler than your opponent, and Pokemon Champions will be no different. We've seen Pokemon use cosmetics in Pokemon Unite, and that has been massively successful in lining their pockets with Gholdengo.
Your trainer will have the opportunity to be decked out in probably way-too-expensive gear, and it will no doubt cover the cost of running this game on its own. Servers aren't cheap, but neither are the new digital Jordans your trainer NEEDS to have.
Rental Passes
An important factor of this game is that it is available both on the Nintendo Switch family of consoles as well as on mobile devices. In other words, people who haven't even touched a Switch might start competitive battling.
Without a large amount of Pokemon in their non-existant Pokemon Home, they will have nothing to battle with. However, just like in Pokemon Battle Revolution and Pokemon Stadium, there will no doubt be Rental Passes to allow players to use premade teams and Pokemon potentially for a limited time.
Imagine this: You're sick of your current team and you keep losing to a Calyrex-Shadow team. What do you do? Well, you swipe that credit card! Pokemon Champions could offer a subscription to get access to a rotating group of Pokemon to use in your teams, changing every week. This would allow players to try different compositions for a small monthly membership.
Items and Abilities
We at OHKO hope this isn't the case, but items and hidden abilities could very easily be locked behind a paywall. Items and abilities are some of, if not THE most important part of a Pokemon's build, and items cannot be moved into Pokemon Home.
That begs the question, how will you access items? Well, potentially through a paywall. That same monthly membership from before could be the only way to get items like leftovers or choice specs.
If this is the case, Pokemon Champions would create a situation where there is no doubt that paying will help you perform better in battles. Items are paramount to your success, and without them you're a sitting duck to a Calyrex-Shadow who can outspeed anything your non-member hands can touch.
Is Pokemon Champions ACTUALLY Pay-to-Win?
Well, we don't know yet! This article is being written before the Pokemon Presents on July 22nd, and we can only speculate for now. We will update this article and keep an eye out for any developments that will change our view on this topic.
For now, keep an eye here on OHKO for updates and news regarding Pokemon Champions, as well as a new suite of tools for you to use when building your Pokemon Champions teams!