It’s been a wild day or two for Pokémon Go players after intermittent issues affecting all Niantic titles caused multiple bugs to surface, including a frustrating one affecting Ursaring’s evolution.
In other news, Scarlet and Violet sales numbers have continued to climb, and now the Generation IX titles have sold more than 20 million units, making it the fourth best-selling title in the series.
Popular PokéTuber Bhushan Thumsi, better known as Freezai, had an amazing run at the 2023 Pokémon Orlando Regional Championships, making himself and his fans proud in the process.
And on a final note, we asked ChatGPT to tell us what it thinks would make the perfect Pokémon game, and it listed a number of features that we believe fans would totally agree with.
Go rocked with multiple bugs as Niantic experiences outages
Niantic has been dealing with intermittent outages across all its apps, including Pokémon Go, which has caused multiple bugs to surface, like being unable to interact and access gyms.
A particularly frustrating one is making players miss out on the rare chance to evolve Ursaring into Ursaluna, even if they have enough Teddiursa Candies and are trying to trigger the evolution during a full moon—both of which are required to make it happen.
The app doesn’t seem to recognize that a full moon is active even when it is, meaning players may need to wait until the next full moon, which happens approximately once a month.
Niantic has since claimed to have resolved the issues, but it’s unclear if that includes all of them.
Scarlet and Violet hits massive 20 million sale milestone
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet shattered records after releasing, becoming the fastest-selling title in the franchise when it hit 10 million sales within three days of its release date on Nov. 23.
As impressive as that was, the momentum never slowed down. According to the latest numbers, it’s now doubled that, hitting 20.61 million units sold—making it the fourth best-selling entry so far.
Red and Blue sold 31 million units, making it the best-selling title in the franchise. It’s followed by Sword and Shield with 25 million units sold and Gold and Silver with 23 million units sold.
Scarlet and Violet is next, and if things keep up, it could top both of those and become number two.
Freezai impresses at first Scarlet and Violet VGC tournament
Freezai might not have won the 2023 Pokémon Orlando Regional Championship: the PokéTuber was eliminated in the first round of the top 32 single-elimination bracket. But he still had an amazing run in the swiss bracket, with nine wins and one loss.
He’s known for his prowess in battle as a pro player, but Freezai has been more focused on his popular Pokémon-focused YouTube channel as of late and had only been practicing for two months.
Freezai used Tatsugiri, Maushold, Flutter Mane, Annihilape, Dondozo, and Volcarona, and is planning to release a video about his run.
ChatGPT describes the perfect Pokémon game
We asked ChatGPT, the AI chatbot launched by OpenAI in Nov. 2022, to tell us what features and qualities the perfect Pokémon game would have and its answer was quite impressive.
At first, it said the perfect Pokémon game is subjective and varies from person to person, which is true. But then it listed a number of key features based on feedback from players, including:
- A vast open world
- A diverse range of Pokémon to catch and train
- A compelling and well-written story
- Challenging yet fair battles
- A variety of customization options for characters and their Pokémon
- Better local and online multiplayer options
- Improved graphics and animations
- A flexible and dynamic battle system with more room for creativity
- Extensive post-game content with more challenges and experiences
- A more intuitive user interface
These all seem like things most players would agree with. Fair play, ChatGPT. It’s a good list.
