A brand new Pokémon Legends sport is coming to the “Nintendo Change household of methods” in 2025. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, introduced Tuesday with a short teaser trailer, is an “formidable new entry” into the sequence that can launch concurrently worldwide. It’s additionally gas for the fireplace {that a} new Nintendo Change console is coming subsequent yr.
The primary Pokémon Legends sport, Arceus, launched in 2022. Arceus was new floor for the franchise: the primary open-world sport within the sequence, one thing for which followers had lengthy clamored. The Pokémon Firm provided little in the way in which of particulars on Z-A, which can happen in Lumiose Metropolis of the Kalos area, the France-inspired setting launched in Pokémon X and Y. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, “an city redevelopment plan is underway to form town into a spot that belongs to each individuals and Pokémon.”
Wording across the sport’s launch, particularly that it’ll come to Nintendo “methods,” has already caught the attention of some followers. Whereas that would check with variations on the Change—the Change Lite, the OLED mannequin—stories earlier this month recommend that the Change successor is predicted in 2025. VGC stories that the delay might be a push to offer Nintendo time to line up “stronger first-party software program.”
Anticipation for a brand new Nintendo console couldn’t be greater. It’s been almost seven years because the firm launched the Change and greater than two because the OLED model dropped. All of the extra cause for followers to take a position about when the following system would possibly come. Following Tuesday’s Z-A announcement, “Change 2”—the title generally given to the (presumably) forthcoming console—started trending on X with followers posting “I can care about Pokémon once more” and “The Change 2 needs to be subsequent yr as a result of I simply know they don’t need us enjoying the brand new Pokémon sport in 30 [frames per second].”
The brand new Change’s existence is hardly a secret nowadays; throughout GDC’s 2024 state-of-the-industry survey, 8 % of polled builders stated they had been engaged on video games for its successor. It’s not a query of if the Change 2 exists; it’s when Nintendo will lastly announce it.