Preview: Pokémon Champions is a revolution

Domagoj Belancic

25/3/2026

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

The Pokémon world is on the verge of a massive upheaval. Ironically, a free-to-play game could bring about lasting positive change to the franchise.

Remember Pokémon Stadium for the N64? Well then you’re in luck. Pokémon Champions, a spiritual successor to the legendary battle simulator, will be released on 8 April. The game, available for Switch and smartphones, will focus on strategic, turn-based Pokémon battles, doing away with unnecessary frills. There’s no story, no game world to explore and no additional game modes.

Simply catching Pokémon and throwing them into battle.

I had the chance to try out the game at the European Pokémon Championships in London, managing to chat with producer and development director Masaaki Hoshino along the way. Even if you’re not into competitive Pokémon battles, you’ll still have plenty to look forward to if you’re a fan of the classic Pocket Monsters. I don’t say this lightly: Pokémon Champions has the potential to permanently change the franchise as a whole.

Who is Masaaki Hoshino?

Masaaki Hoshino works as a Technical Director at The Pokémon Company. He previously worked at Bandai Namco, where he was involved in the Soulcalibur series, among other projects. His love for Pokémon was sparked by Pokémon Yellow. He was active in the competitive Pokémon scene for years, both in video games and the trading card game. In 2015, Hoshino was given the opportunity to produce the fighting game Pokkén Tournament. By 2019, the Pokémon superfan had moved from Bandai Namco to The Pokémon Company, where he’s been in charge of the MOBA spin-off Pokémon Unite.

Pokémon has a problem…

With every new mainline Pokémon game, developer Game Freak faces a major challenge – having to satisfy an extremely diverse audience. This is evident in the design of the combat system, among other things.

Above all, battles need to be fun as a single-player experience and appeal to casual fans. They shouldn’t be frustratingly difficult, and should keep surprising players with new features and gameplay mechanics. In addition, fans expect new Pokémon and moves to be introduced with each new generation.

On the other hand, Game Freak has to take the competitive Pokémon scene into account. After all, every new mainline game will be played in official Pokémon tournaments for years. This means that new game mechanics also have to work in multiplayer mode. New monsters and attacks should be perfectly balanced for competitive battles too.

It’s a nearly impossible task. If Game Freak plays it safe, casual fans will complain that Pokémon’s boring and doesn’t try anything new. If Game Freak experiments too much, they’ll upset their hardcore fan base and risk undermining the growing competitive Pokémon scene.

The preferences of casual single-player gamers and hardcore multiplayer fans are at odds with one another in other aspects of the game design as well.

Single-player gamers want to spend as much time as possible in the Pokémon world. Catching, raising and training your own team is a lengthy process, and the grind is all part of the fun. You slowly build a relationship with your little monsters and learn to love them.

For competitive players, this single-player aspect is a major barrier to entry. To put together a reasonably competitive team of Pokémon, they have to spend hundreds of hours grinding away in single-player mode. It’s a real pain to get Pokémon with exactly the right stats, abilities and moves.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve never been interested in competitive battles. I don’t have the time or patience for this grind.

…and Pokémon Champions is the solution

Pokémon Champions is set to solve this fundamental problem in its games. Uniquely, it completely separates its single-player world and the competitive multiplayer.

Here’s the plan: going forward, Game Freak will focus on developing its mainline games and creating a successful single-player experience. The studio can introduce new Pokémon, moves, and battle mechanics – such as the recent Terastal phenomenon – without worrying about the competitive scene. It’s also possible that future mainline games will venture into even more ambitious experiments such as real-time battle systems, like the ones we’ve seen in the Pokémon Legends spin-offs.

Pokémon Champions, on the other hand, is intended to serve as a competitive multiplayer platform for the future, replacing mainline games in tournaments. The battle simulator is being developed by The Pokémon Works, a joint venture between The Pokémon Company and Japanese studio ILCA, who previously worked on Pokémon Home and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. This outsourcing will further reduce Game Freak’s workload.

Producer and Development Director Masaaki Hoshino also attributes symbolic significance to Pokémon Champions: «With Pokémon Champions, we want to preserve the classic turn-based battle system for the long term. In a sense, as a kind of legacy, no matter which direction the main games take.»

Hoshino confirms that, despite the separation of single-player and multiplayer modes, there’ll still be links between the two worlds: «New content from the main games – such as new Pokémon or new features – will also be added to Pokémon Champions over time. However, they will always be adapted to the classic, turn-based combat system.»

No more sleepless nights hatching eggs

For Hoshino’s team, it’s important that Pokémon Champions doesn’t just cater to existing hardcore players. To ensure the competitive Pokémon world remains healthy, it has to grow and appeal to new audiences. Their goal is to achieve this by removing as many barriers to entry as possible.

The grind I mentioned earlier – an endless slog to obtain the perfect Pokémon – is completely eliminated in Pokémon Champions. A complex decision for Hoshino. He recalls while laughing: «I have plenty of experience training and breeding Pokémon in the main series games myself – including many nights spent riding around on my virtual bike to hatch Pokémon eggs.»

He goes on: «This experience will continue to play an important role in mainline games. But from the start, Pokémon Champions was designed to make getting started easier, allowing players to focus on battles sooner. That’s why we decided to make drastic changes.»

I’ll see for myself how these changes feel on opening night. Pokémon Champions is a pure battle simulator, no unnecessary frills. Story, game world, context? Nada. In just a few clicks, I can leap into a battle against a fellow journalist from France sitting next to me.

But before we get started, I’ll train my team of Pokémon. I select a Pokémon – in this case, Greninja – and adjust its stats (HP, Attack, Defence, etc.) with just a few clicks. A total of 66 status points are free to assign. Should I make my Battle Frog even stronger than it already is? Or should I focus on improving its weaknesses?

You can also customise your monster’s appearance, affecting the base distribution of its combat stats.

Last but not least, I select four attacks from a list and choose a unique ability: Protean. This causes a Pokémon to change its type when it uses an attack. An exciting strategic twist that’ll hopefully throw my opponent off balance.

I was done in mere minutes. In Game Freak’s mainline titles, this would take countless hours of hard work, training and breeding – especially if you have to repeat the process for an entire Pokémon team.

Another barrier to entry that Hoshino and his team want to break down is catching Pokémon. You can play Pokémon Champions without having caught a single Pokémon in any of the main series games. Once a day, you choose from a randomly generated list of Pokémon at Roster Ranch and add it to your team.

If you already have a well-rounded collection in Pokémon Home, you can also import your favourite Pokémon from the cloud database.

Hoshino explains how it works: «When you transfer a Pokémon from Pokémon Home, it retains its stats, moves and abilities.» However, it’s possible that certain moves found in other games may not be available in Pokémon Champions. Any changes you make in Pokémon Champions only apply within that game. Once the Pokémon is returned, everything remains unchanged in the original game or Pokémon Home.»

What is Pokémon Home?

Pokémon Home is a cloud service where you can store all the Pokémon you’ve collected from various games. You can also transfer monsters between compatible games. The basic version is free. For more storage space and additional premium features, you’ll need to sign up for a subscription.

It’s important to note that both training and recruiting cost so-called Victory Points (VP). You have to earn these by fighting in battles, so you can’t just tinker with your team endlessly and collect new monsters all the time – you have to actually play the game every now and then. A sensible restriction – provided it doesn’t turn into a farce because of the monetisation model (more on that below).

A Pokémon game for the ages

After practising, I jump right into a double-header against my French opponent. I feel right at home. This is classic Pokémon, just as Hoshino promises. With one exception: the game presents all relevant information in a much clearer way than before. When I select an attack, I immediately see all the key information – type, power, accuracy and which opposing Pokémon the attack is particularly effective against.

In our demo, we could even Mega Evolve selected Pokémon. This temporary evolution was first introduced in the sixth generation of Pokémon (X and Y). It provides various benefits for the duration of a battle, such as new attacks, abilities and increased offensive or defensive power.

In addition to Mega Evolutions, Pokémon Champions is also set to feature elements from other Pokémon generations. There’s more: for the first time in series history, various special features will come together.

In the first trailer for Pokémon Champions, you can see a Mega Charizard X facing off against a terastallised Dondozo. Incredible!

I want to find out how they merged these different game mechanics into a single combat system. To me, it sounds like an almost impossible task. Hoshino clarifies: «At launch, only Mega Evolutions will be available. We’re currently still actively exploring how other combat mechanics will be integrated in the future and how they’ll work together. We’ll carefully examine which combinations make sense and how we can balance them.»

Hoshino goes on to explain that rules and game mechanics may change with each new season. The selection of Pokémon will also be continually expanded: «At launch, there will only be a limited selection. After that, we’ll gradually add more playable Pokémon across various seasons. There could be thousands of them eventually. But if they were all available at the same time in the same competitive environment, things would quickly become too complicated.»

Hoshino and his team plan to take their time with Pokémon Champions. It’s a long-term project designed to keep Pokémon fans engaged for years to come: «We want to keep the game running and continue to develop it in the long term. It’s meant to change and grow. However, the turn-based combat system always remains at the core.»

The catch: how will it be monetised?

My time playing the game and my conversation with Masaaki Hoshino have left me feeling optimistic. Pokémon Champions has enormous potential. The new platform could revolutionise the competitive scene and shape the future design of mainline games.

However, there’s one major unknown hanging over the game: monetisation.

At the time of our interview, Hoshino isn’t yet able to provide any detailed insights into the payment model: «We’re currently working on the exact details. What I can say is we’re exploring a model that includes a kind of Battle Pass, where players can unlock additional rewards by paying. We’re also considering a subscription model that would unlock additional features.»

In the meantime, The Pokémon Company has released some additional details about the payment model. These revelations are setting off my free-to-play alarm bells. They mention multiple currencies, Battle Passes, paid starter packs to expand your Pokémon storage and an in-game shop featuring cosmetics and functional items like Mega Stones (required to trigger Mega Evolutions for certain Pokémon).

At first glance, it looks like typical free-to-play chaos. Still, at least Victory Points, the game’s main currency, can’t be purchased with real money. Minor relief. You can only earn VP by participating in battles. As a reminder, you need this currency to train your Pokémon and recruit new ones. It seems, then, that the core gameplay loop remains unaffected by the monetisation model.

We won’t know how the payment model actually affects the gaming experience until after launch. I pray to the Pokémon gods that The Pokémon Company sees reason and doesn’t go overboard. It’d be a real shame if what might be the biggest revolution in series history failed because of a greedy monetisation model.

Pokémon Champions will be released on 8 April for the Switch and Switch 2. Versions for Android and iOS will come out later this year. Nintendo invited me to its preview event in London and covered my travel expenses.

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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