A year ago Nintendo apologized for the state of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and promised that they were working on improvements. Did they lie?

[Truno]

After Pokemon Scarlet & Violet launched last year in a disastrous state earning the entries the lowest critic score in the series' history, to everyone's surprise, Nintendo acknowledged the backlash and issued a brief apology in the patch notes for version 1.1.0 of the game:


View: https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1598151413586173953

We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games' performance," Nintendo said in the patch notes. "Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games"

Click to shrink...

It's been over a year since this statement and we've seen the release of the DLC for S&V, and yet, there have been 0 improvements to the inconveniences that Nintendo apologized for.

Did Nintendo lie? Or is the solution going to be that every unhappy consumer will have to free up $400+ to purchase their next console that might brute force through these issues through backward compatibility?

 

[Steamy Manatee]

the memory leak is gone but the game now runs worse than at launch lol

 

[Deleted member 12859]

well they mentioned fixing the performance issues and then proceeded to not fix the performance issues and went on to sell dlc with the same performance issues

so yeah they lied

 

[SketchDog]

They said they were working on it in that quote. Don't see a commitment to any release. So not a lie.

 

[darthbob]

The playerbase at large just forgot/stopped caring about the performance problems. Hell, I've even read from prominent Pokemon 'content creators' that the performance problems and glitches were overblown.

As long as people keep giving money nothing will change.

 

[Serebii]

A lot of the bugs and issues that went viral are gone (heck many were gone in the Day 1 patch). They reduced amount of Pokémon that can spawn at once to help frame rate.

Frame rate is still iffy at best.

 

[Ushojax]

They didn't lie, they did make a very minor effort after launch to try and improve performance by cutting the number of characters displayed on screen and fixing major bugs.

A truly meaningful improvement to performance was never going to happen, Game Freak do not have the technical capability or time to do that.

The game engine constantly feels like it is on the edge of breaking while you are playing the game, it's not fit for purpose and I'm sure any development resources would be better spent on their next game rather than trying to fix the unfixable.

 

[Amnixia]

Its not a promise for Nintendo to make, Gamefreak is its own company and with the way TPC is set up nobody can really cut out GameFreak.

That said: technically "improvements" can mean anything but its clear the game doesn't perform as it should and Gamefreak execs should get a lot of shit for forcing this rate of releases which clearly results in technical issues in their games (and I say this as someone who did enjoy SV and plays regularly still)

Edit:
Also the whole "release now, patch later" thing the games industry as a whole seems to be doing these last few years fucking sucks

 

[808s & Villainy]

This is why I always tell people Nintendo doesn't have the power over Gamefreak and Pokemon some people assume they do. Because note the tweet was made by NOA even though there's an official Pokemon twitter/X account

But they did fix some things, it's just that there was plenty that also wasn't fixed

 

[Red]

There were stability improvements. The frame rate is still bad. But the game crashes less, so

 

[Pai Pai Master]

They did work on it, made some improvements and left other issues to linger. They didn't lie they just failed to remove all the flaws that have been detrimental to the game.

 

[DeadeyeNull]

The game now has Blaziken when is a big improvement. That tweet doesn't mention what feedback they are talking about so it's less of a lie then just a non statement. I think the crashes were basically fixed too

 

[Vyse]

Pokemon fans should apologize for enabling Game Freak

 

[Trakan]

It was a very vague statement, but the game doesn't run any better than it did at launch.

 

[disparate]

Edit:
Also the whole "release now, patch later" thing the games industry as a whole seems to be doing these last few years fucking sucks

Click to shrink...

this started in the 360 generation in earnest

 

[Ambient]

Frame rate has been improved to a solid 22-27fps. It used to bottom out way lower. For a turn based game like Pokemon frame rate isn't really important.

 

[spyroflame0487]

The base game slowdowns and problems definitely seemed to have been fixed after the patch went out. In the very least they happened less frequently. However, I had a major slowdown in December so:


View: https://x.com/SpyroFlame/status/1601767063760302081?s=20


The DLC though, there's been quite a few slowdowns in some areas (especially those that are foliage heavy like some corners of Kitakami and ironically, one section of the Savanna Biome in the Terarrium)

 

[Angie]

The DLC does the amazing thing of managing the frames to reach 0.


Just stay away from that mud.

 

[KillstealWolf]

Some bugs were fixed, but the performance is still abysmal, the DLC has arguably the worst performing areas of the game (Nothing amplifies this more than the game trying to give an overview of each area of the Terrarium at the beginning of the second DLC and struggling to load each Biomme to do so, look at any youtube video on it and see), even on the most recent of patches I still get crashes when attempting to do online raids with other people every so often.

 

[Truno]

The game now has Blaziken when is a big improvement. That tweet doesn't mention what feedback they are talking about so it's less of a lie then just a non statement. I think the crashes were basically fixed too

Click to shrink...

They highlighted this in their full statement:

We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games' performance,

Click to shrink...

 

[Wolf]

The game still runs like shit and the DLC areas not only look worse at times but still run like shit.

Yes, they lied. All the way to the bank.

 

[Darkstorne]

Players: "We want performance improvements!"

Monkey Paw curls

Nintendo: "Here are the performance improvements we promised you we were working on."

 

[Flame Champion]

They didn't lie. They did make improvements, did they not? The Switch is ancient hardware so there's only so much that can be improved, and Gamefreak is far more preoccupied with selling you the next entry in the franchise than anything else.

 

[Amnixia]

this started in the 360 generation in earnest

Click to shrink...

True, I still hate that they do it though
And it does seem to be a growing trend over the years, but that's probably also because games get more and more features

 

[Cronogear]

A handful of bugs have been fixed, so they technically didn't lie.

There's still a metric ton of visual bugs and glitches, including a soft lock I experienced recently when the camera wouldn't move with the player in their house so I couldn't leave and had to restart the game.

Performance is still completely unacceptable, doubly so when it's somehow even worse in the DLC and has massive multi-second freezes that make it seem like it's about to crash.

I think the main problem is probably two things:

1. The game is so fundamentally poorly made that any meaningful improvements would require borderline remaking the game, which requires a huge investment of time and money.

2. The first and biggest priority for mainline Pokemon is not quality or polish, but its release schedule. Any sort of fix or rework that would tangibly impact future release schedules is simply not an option. This is why instead of focusing on fixes they focused on getting the DLC out the door (and in an arguably worse state than the base game) because they'll need to move on to the next game asap. They need to keep getting merchandise, trading cards, anime, etc. out along with the main games, which is the real money maker for the IP.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

If I recall correctly they said they would fix some performance issues. That normally includes bugs and crashes which I heard they made inprovements to. If it still runs like shit just means they didn't go far enough.

I wouldn't say they lied. But certainly they were not going to put in a ton of resources to get it to a locked 30 fps so if that was what people were thinking then I get the disappointment. It released in an exceptionally poor state though.

 

[Zafir]

Well they only said improvements, and I think they did make very minor ones, lol.

Unfortunately the game needed lots of care, which clearly gamefreak aren't willing to give so they can keep up their tight pokemon schedule. Sadly not surprising at all, and it's why I haven't bought the DLC.

Overall it's just a shame, the game coulda been really good, the DLC even seems like it has a positive reception, but it's all just ruined by poor performance.

 

[RedAhmed]

They've been intentionally vague, they didn't address the exact issues and didn't say that they'll release a fix. They just said they're working on improvements. So, technically they're correct. The best kind of correct.

This is why I always tell people Nintendo doesn't have the power over Gamefreak and Pokemon some people assume they do. Because note the tweet was made by NOA even though there's an official Pokemon twitter/X account

But they did fix some things, it's just that there was plenty that also wasn't fixed

Click to shrink...

Yep. NoA tweeting this doesn't mean a thing. It would mean something at least if it was TPC tweeting (and being less vague). But also knew Gamefreak would never fix the game, they were too busy with the DLC and now with the next game. Nintendo can't make them fix their games. My conspiracy theory is that they noticed backlash in NA and NoA was made to make this tweet just to let people feel like they're being heard.

Unless Gamefreak changes their schedule with development, these kind of messy games will just become the norm and perhaps even worse.

 

[TheAggroCraig]

They've definitely fixed stuff but it's still a mess in many regards, and I doubt anything major will be changing from here on with gen 9.

 

[Trakan]

Frame rate has been improved to a solid 22-27fps. It used to bottom out way lower. For a turn based game like Pokemon frame rate isn't really important.

Click to shrink...

The game definitely drops lower than that at times and you're not in a turn based battle the entire time you're playing the game. A lot of the time you're traversing an open world and frame drops make a huge impact.

 

[WrenchNinja]

This was at launch


View: https://twitter.com/digitalfoundry/status/1593967330551209984?t=LnbRy2tmAFLjRYrB-SPm2Q&s=19


View: https://twitter.com/digitalfoundry/status/1632033157636583427?t=KhJdWs_O3fBQI8bh8Unvgg&s=19

This was back in March, so you tell me how committed they were

 

[JB2448]

They didn't lie. They did make improvements, did they not? The Switch is ancient hardware so there's only so much that can be improved, and Gamefreak is far more preoccupied with selling you the next entry in the franchise than anything else.

Click to shrink...

I'm not going to argue against the Tegra X1 being outdated at this point, but when developers like Monolith Soft exist, and when games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom exist, at some point you're going to have to look past the hardware for why things aren't working as they should.

 

[Skeeter49]

I wouldn't call it a Nintendo lie since they really have no say over what Gamefreak does. So more of a Gamefreak lie than anything.

 

[Lotus]

Pokemon fans should apologize for enabling Game Freak

Click to shrink...

 

[RedDevil]

In the end it feels like they just wanted to appease internet's discourse rather than the general consumer's sentiment. So yeah, fixing some bugs but anything else deal with it.

Did Nintendo lie? Or is the solution going to be that every unhappy consumer will have to free up $400+ to purchase their next console that might brute force through these issues through backward compatibility?

Click to shrink...

Players: "We want performance improvements!"

Monkey Paw curls

Nintendo: "Here are the performance improvements we promised you we were working on."

Click to shrink...

Good luck with that improving the performance of old games. Also that mock up looks awful.

 

[Anth0ny]

Straight up fucking lied

Zero incentive to change

 

[Lukar]

They fixed a lot of the more egregious bugs, but the games still run like complete shit.

 

[Kemal86]

Straight up fucking lied

Zero incentive to change

Click to shrink...

yep

would not surprise me if the next games ran even worse. why bother improving? S/V sold ten bazillion copies despite the online discourse.

 

[Neoxon]

They did work on it, made some improvements and left other issues to linger. They didn't lie they just failed to remove all the flaws that have been detrimental to the game.

Click to shrink...

Basically this

 

[Greywaren]

They fixed the memory leak and the biggest bugs, but the game still runs like hot garbage in most areas.

 

[Serebii]

Straight up fucking lied

Zero incentive to change

Click to shrink...

Yeah they lied except for all the fixes they did

But yeah let's ignore those

 

[darknil]

Well, Nintendo is working hard on the Switch 2, which is going to fix performance issues, so they didn't lie (?)

 

[Lowblood]

Players: "We want performance improvements!"

Monkey Paw curls

Nintendo: "Here are the performance improvements we promised you we were working on."

Click to shrink...

In all honesty, yeah, I'm still on Team "Hope Switch 2 BC can brute-force improvements." I'll wait and see how that goes before revisiting the game.

 

[dennett316]

They didn't lie, they did make a very minor effort after launch to try and improve performance by cutting the number of characters displayed on screen and fixing major bugs.

A truly meaningful improvement to performance was never going to happen, Game Freak do not have the technical capability or time to do that.

The game engine constantly feels like it is on the edge of breaking while you are playing the game, it's not fit for purpose and I'm sure any development resources would be better spent on their next game rather than trying to fix the unfixable.

Click to shrink...

I see quotes like this all the time regarding Game Freak. They're in charge of one of the best selling game franchises there is, bringing in a HUGE amount of money with each release. Is there a reason why they're not a larger team with the capability to attract high level talent?
I get the answer is probably going to be a variation of "the games keep selling despite the technical issues, so why would they look to invest and improve?", it just seems so silly to me that one of the biggest franchises in gaming has recently released in such shoddy states and that people keep making this excuse for it.
If an EA or Ubisoft pulled this sort of thing they'd be raked over the coals for it. Game Freak and Nintendo seem to get a pass of sorts (despite the vocal criticism they get, there is just as vocal a defence).

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

 

[Serebii]

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

Click to shrink...

2D art and animation, as much as we hate to say it, are pretty niche and the younger audience seems to not resonate as well with it

Why do you think Disney doesn't do 2D animation anymore?

 

[RedDevil]

I see quotes like this all the time regarding Game Freak. They're in charge of one of the best selling game franchises there is, bringing in a HUGE amount of money with each release. Is there a reason why they're not a larger team with the capability to attract high level talent?
I get the answer is probably going to be a variation of "the games keep selling despite the technical issues, so why would they look to invest and improve?", it just seems so silly to me that one of the biggest franchises in gaming has recently released in such shoddy states and that people keep making this excuse for it.
If an EA or Ubisoft pulled this sort of thing they'd be raked over the coals for it. Game Freak and Nintendo seem to get a pass of sorts (despite the vocal criticism they get, there is just as vocal a defence).

Wonder why they keep pushing for these open world experiences that the platform can't handle instead of a more traditional experience polished to a mirror sheen, with fantastic 2D art and animation?

Click to shrink...

In reality it's more of it'd mean less profits for something that might not make a difference on the sales.

 

[dennett316]

2D art and animation, as much as we hate to say it, are pretty niche and the younger audience seems to not resonate as well with it

Why do you think Disney doesn't do 2D animation anymore?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I suppose it is out of fashion outside of high profile indies. It's Pokemon though, I still think it'd sell gangbusters with a more classic style. It's just odd to see the Pokemon games run so poorly when Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom run much better on the same hardware. I know the scope is different, hundreds of different Pokemon models and the like, but still...yeesh.

 

[elyetis]

Depend if we take what they said in the spirit of how most people would understand it ( a drastic improvement / make the performance decent ), or what would make it not a lie because well technically if they fix one bug, and improve the performance by 0.001% then it's not really a lie.

 

[Aiqops]

Click to shrink...

I see you are part of the problem.🧐

 

[Trakan]

2D art and animation, as much as we hate to say it, are pretty niche and the younger audience seems to not resonate as well with it

Why do you think Disney doesn't do 2D animation anymore?

Click to shrink...

Between BDSP's awful chibi style and S/V's performance issues, it's clear that it doesn't matter.

The next games could go back to sprites and they'd still sell tens of millions.