Last week, AR’s flagship game developer Niantic announced the next big update to Pokémon Go that would add Paldean Pokémon from Scarlet and Violet.
Creatures first introduced in the latest Nintendo Switch titles began to be rolled out into Go yesterday, September 5, and while this is a milestone in itself, more impressive is the new status this gives the AR game.
As of the new additions, Pokémon Go has more unique species than any other Pokémon game ever.
The very best
Before now, the biggest collection of Pokémon that one could curate was in the handheld games Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, released back in 2017 for the Nintendo 3DS. At the time, a total of 807 unique species of Pokémon existed and – though not all were available to find in-game, with some needing to be traded up from earlier titles – each one could be trained, tamed and entertained.
However, since Pokémon games began releasing on the Switch, not all species have come along for the ride. Each game has its own catalogue of creatures with hundreds rendered unplayable in each new entry – differing from title to title depending on who is coded in. As a result, while the total number of Pokémon species now surpasses 1,000, the final 3DS titles have continued to have the most variety with 807 options.
By comparison, Scarlet and Violet – the newest open-world games – have a measly 400 species between them at the time of writing.
Pokémon Go is super effective!
Meanwhile Pokémon Go, two months on from its seventh anniversary, has raised its total to 814 with the inclusion of some Scarlet and Violet favourites – surpassing even the best the 3DS had to offer.
This marks a historic moment that mostly appears to have flown under the radar: The Pokémon Go Twitter account hasn’t so much as tweeted about it, and instead it was Eurogamer who first noticed the new total.
Go’s creature capacity is only going to grow from here, meaning that from this moment on, any frenzied Pokémon fanatic has more choice of partner – more player freedom – in Go than they do anywhere else.
Thanks in large part to Pokémon Go – the fourth most downloaded game of all time in the USA – Niantic featured in our Top 50 Game Makers 2023 list.
A Paldean Pokémon actually made its way to Pokémon Masters before Go, releasing immediately after the company’s latest presentation.
