Pokemon Stars Is the Nintendo Switch’s Pokemon Sun and Moon: Report

Over the week we’ve seen reports on what the Nintendo Switch could be priced at, what games it would ship with, and now details have emerged on what could be its most crucial game in the short term — Pokemon Stars.

According to multiple sources speaking to Eurogamer, Pokemon Stars is the codename for a new Pokemon game for the Nintendo Switch. It will be a new version of Pokemon Sun and Moon.

It seems that there will be some form of connectivity between all three games with Pokemon being tradable via the Pokemon Box app. There might be more Pokemon to collect in Pokemon Stars although not all of Eurogamer’s sources could verify this.

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The game will apparently feature the same map, routes, cities, and art style, albeit at a higher resolution. It could be out later in 2017 although it was pegged for a Summer launch on the Nintendo Switch.

This isn’t a new concept. Rather, developer GameFreak has done this in the past as well.

(Also see:  Can’t Decide Between Pokemon Sun and Moon? Read This)

“Earlier generations of Pokemon games have featured a third title launched later with expanded features - Pokemon Yellow followed Game Boy originals Red and Blue to start this trend, which continued through until Pokemon Platinum followed Diamond and Pearl on DS,” writes Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips.

He proceeded to shed light on GameFreak’s development process, allowing them to work on Pokemon Sun, Moon, and Stars at the same time.

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“This parallel development structure has allowed the work-in-progress Pokemon Stars to already feature working versions of Sun and Moon content. I'm told that GameFreak largely paused work on the Switch version a couple of months ago to polish Sun and Moon in time for their launch this month, but that work on Stars will now resume with the development of features not found in the 3DS versions,” the post continues. “Pokemon Stars' development shouldn't be seen as taking anything away from Sun and Moon's launch - this is how all third entries in the Pokemon franchise are developed.”