Will gen 8 age well for future players?

[WaterTypeStarter]

It may be annoying enough to say have to deal with DLC, but at least current players have something. On the other hand, players in decades to come may suffer more. For example, trade Pokemon have kind of aged poorly for those who don't have friends with the opposite game of their old out of print game, many getting forced to resort to certain means to evolve trade Pokemon. Likewise, event Pokemon have aged even worse, given how rare the event items are it is very difficult to find one and most players in order to obtain mythicals must resort to questionable means. So with the current trend of DLC, will future players be forced to resort to shadier means to access content that will not only no longer be available to buy but also not even be availble limited second hand given the digital nature?

 

[Mhov]

The physical SWSH + Expansion pass bundle will probably sell for astronomical prices since the DLC is on the cartridge, unless I'm mistaken and read that wrong on the nintendo site. I think there's a good chance they'll be sought after by future shiny hunters if it's possible to transfer Pokemon from Gen VIII to future generations many years from now.

 

[Orthographer]

I think the problem goes beyond Pokémon SWSH; it's the *entire game industry*. Solving the problem would involve restructuring copyright law and rethinking prevailing ideas about the distribution of abandoned intellectual property. Let's hope that Nintendo decides to keep these games available for a long time to avoid what happened to the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Pokémon games.

 

[WaterTypeStarter]

I think the problem goes beyond Pokémon SWSH; it's the *entire game industry*. Solving the problem would involve restructuring copyright law and rethinking prevailing ideas about the distribution of abandoned intellectual property. Let's hope that Nintendo decides to keep these games available for a long time to avoid what happened to the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Pokémon games.

What happened to them? You will still see tons of playthroughs on those gens, and gaming forums continue to discuss them, so clearly those games have aged well.

 

[Ophie]

What happened to them? You will still see tons of playthroughs on those gens, and gaming forums continue to discuss them, so clearly those games have aged well.

It's not that they age well or not, but it's the issue of availability. Manufacturing for these games ended when the following generation came out. Technically it happened for Generations VI and VII too, but they remained on the 3DS eShop all the way until the entire eShop closed down. The result is that these Pokémon games started soaring in aftermarket value due to relatively few people selling them off to the used market and relatively many people who really want one.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I think that the games will age okay in time but not very well but also not extremely poorly either. Gen I aged very badly not because of the graphical limitations of the Game Boy but rather the glitches and bugs that are quite rampant in these games, Gen II suffered a bit from the sudden level curve and graphics, Gen III suffers from never being able to actually compete the a National Dex without a second player and a Game Cube, Coliseum And XD and the GBA Player without cheating, and Gen V suffers from the closure of the Dream World website and game link portion of the games. Gen IV is really the first Gen to age quite well and Gen VI is doing okay despite feeling incomplete. Gen VIII should age just fine.

 

[Prince Amrod]

I think that the games will age okay in time but not very well but also not extremely poorly either. Gen I aged very badly not because of the graphical limitations of the Game Boy but rather the glitches and bugs that are quite rampant in these games, Gen II suffered a bit from the sudden level curve and graphics, Gen III suffers from never being able to actually compete the a National Dex without a second player and a Game Cube, Coliseum And XD and the GBA Player without cheating, and Gen V suffers from the closure of the Dream World website and game link portion of the games. Gen IV is really the first Gen to age quite well and Gen VI is doing okay despite feeling incomplete. Gen VIII should age just fine.

Whilst I agree with the bulk of this, I do think part of what made gen 1 so memorable was the missingno glitch. I feel almost certain everybody who played the games abused it at some point. Just because it was there, plus it was a bizarre way to end up with more starter pokemon encounter dependant.

 

[Shiny Venusaur]

I think GenVIII will age decently well in some areas, while failing massively in others. For starters, GenVIII has a lot to offer in terms of Pokémon variety and because of how raid dens and the wild area works, the pressure to get things like trade evolutions, stone evolutions, etc. goes down drastically; allowing for players to pop in whenever and enjoy a playthrough. There haven't been a lot of premium events for SwSh either for rare Pokémon, Cherish ball mythical's, etc. which also will help it's case when things slowly shut down over the years.

Where it will fail is going to be places like the Wild Area, which will be sparsely populated. Most raids can be completed solo, but not all (to my knowledge anyway, most Gmax aren't soloable). Features like wonder trade and the wifi battling ladders will also suffer. Additionally, and this is just personal opinion, but I think this games Battle Tower is the worst in the series, which will kill some enjoyment later in the games life.

What is yet to be known is how GO, Home, and SwSh will interact once the Switch Servers shut down (if they ever do). To me, this will be the biggest impact on how this game ages. Right now, SwSh is an isolated game - meaning it's the only gen on the system. Without these services, there is no other game to game interaction.