Through a recent interview in 4Gamer, Pokémon art director Ken Sugimori spoke on how we haven’t seen paid Pokemon purchases as DLC alongside director Tetsuya Watanabe.
“When it comes to business, the one thing I’ve always said ‘no!’ to is ‘the act of buying Pokémon with money,‘” says Sugimori. “That is something that has been said since the days [Satoshi] Tajiri was completely involved in everything.” “The reason being, is because it’s one of things that could ‘ruin the worldview’ of Pokémon,” Sugimori continues. “I believe the reason we don’t simply commercialize Pokémon, is that it’s a way of protecting the brand, and for this purpose, we have the specialty company called The Pokémon Company. Therefore, suppose we sell a Pokémon for 100 yen, then we must prepare something that is worthy of that 100 yen, along with a reasonable consent for doing so.”
Even with the stance that Game Freak has, it’s doesn’t mean that we won’t see Pokémon available to buy in the future.
“If we ever get the idea of ‘this could be fun if we could sell it for real-life money,’ or something similar during the planning of a future game, then perhaps we could sell them for 100 yen.” “The game Darumeshi Sports Shop we recently released, is very interesting,” adds Watanabe. “The game itself allows you to lower the price you pay. I thought the idea behind it was amusing, and the system of having payments be part of the game itself, was a very nice experiment.”
I do commend Game Freak for not going in a route where you can buy Pokémon with real world money. Goes to show that a studio in the games industry respects it’s IP by not whoring it out for some quick cash through DLC.
