Companies tend to reference each other often, so it’s not unheard of to suggest that PlayStation should make a Pokémon-like. We’ve seen the company copy Nintendo before, most notably with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, a game that was a close replica of Super Smash Bros. Sadly, that game didn’t do as well as one would have hoped, but now that PlayStation is in a better place, trying their hand at a game like Pokémon could be fruitful. With the recent announcement of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, it got us thinking about whether or not PlayStation could succeed with something like it.
To be clear, it’s not likely that PlayStation would ever go through with it, at least not any time soon. But speculating is fun and in an alternate reality, PlayStation has an incredibly popular RPG in which you capture monsters and make them battle one another. You may be thinking of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a game that actually is quite similar to Pokémon and in many ways is even better. But even if you enjoy Ni No Kuni, there’s no denying that the accessibility is nowhere near that of Pokémon, so it isn’t exactly one-to-one.
There is probably some combination of game design, art, accessibility, replayability, and mechanics that would equal a great Pokémon-like from PlayStation, but it doesn’t seem like something they would ever try. Would it be kid friendly? Would it be more dark? It seems like anything they’d try would be met with ridicule, so it’s not surprising that they haven’t really gone down that road.
Ni No Kuni is probably the best example of a Pokémon-like from PlayStation, which likely wouldn’t have worked as well if it were closer to Pokémon. It would be really neat for PlayStation to put out a game that completely mirrored Pokémon, but it’s hard to imagine what that would even look like. Maybe if it went into a darker, more adult-friendly direction, it could be different enough to make a splash.
What PlayStation is doing now is great, so we trust them with whatever they have planned for the future. In a perfect world, a PlayStation version of Pokémon would be incredible, but since that series is so beloved, it would be near-impossible to get that right and I don’t think PlayStation is willing to take that risk now.
Pokémon has primarily been a handheld game and since the PS Vita is on the decline, it might not feel right being on a home console, anyway.
Would you like to see a PlayStation version of Pokémon? Or do you think they should just keep doing what they’re doing? Let us know!
