Pokemon Go rose to prominence before the Switch was released, yet it’s lacking representation from the Gen 8 games – despite their appearance on Nintendo’s home/portable hybrid system.
Pokemon Go is often criticized for leaning too heavily on Gen 1 & the Kanto region. Obviously, many people have nostalgia for this era of the game, seeing as it bred the first flock of PokeManiacs around the world, but Niantic has drunk a little too much from that well over the years.
What makes the Gen 1 dependence in Pokemon Go even more surprising is that a ton of Pokemon content hasn’t appeared in the game, such as the Z-Moves from Gen 7.
Users on the Pokemon Go Reddit are complaining about the overabundance of Gen 1 content, especially when there’s almost nothing from Sword & Shield, even though those games were a huge hit during Pokemon Go’s heyday.
“We’ll get Galar once they’ve figured out how to get every Pokemon from Kanto into a party hat of some kind,” one user joked, referring to how Pokemon Go events usually just stick a hat on an existing ‘mon.
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One Pokemon Go player wrote, “Earlier, I was just thinking it’s about time for them to add the rest of SV Pokémon like Koraidon and Miraidon.. and then I was like, wait… where the heck is Gen 8??”
There is an explanation, at least according to one user, “They slowed down content releases because at the old pace they would have run out of new content.”
There are rumors that Dynamax and Gigantamax forms will come to Pokemon Go in a future update, but those have yet to be substantiated. For now, it seems that the Gen 8 ‘mons are slowly being doled out to help Niantic have a content line for the game, especially with no new Pokemon title on the horizon until 2025.
