What do you think was the most likely reason that Game Freak decided to only allow players to import certain Pokemon into Sword & Shield?

I’ve gotten this question a number of times now, so I figured I’d address it. I highly suspect the answer is “because they don’t have enough of an animation budget to animate all of the old pokemon that are still various missing animations and animate all of the new pokemon that are being added in Sword and Shield”. Something has to give. Between legacy pokemon that will only be seen by the fraction of players with Pokemon Home and legacy pokemon to import and everybody who plays the game, it seems reasonable that they focus their development efforts on the content to be seen by more players while still making what progress they can on the legacy pokemon as development time and resources allow.

Here’s a pretty great video from Dan Floyd on his [New Frame Plus channel] about the animation requirements for developing a pokemon game. It goes into the animation breakdown in more depth. Keep in mind that he only goes into battle animation. There are even more animations that need to be built beyond just the ones needed for battle - pokemon-amie, pokemon that appear in the overworld, companion pokemon, and so on. It’s a huge scope problem that naturally gets bigger with each passing generation.

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