During June 11th's Nintendo Treehouse, Game Freak's Junichi Masuda shockingly announced that Pokemon fans will be forbidden from transferring hundreds of their beloved pokemon from past games into the series' newest entries, Pokemon Sword and Shield. He elaborated that the change would be a policy shift in how the company would approach Pokemon games from this point forward, suggesting that many more pokemon will be axed from future titles.

Game Freak's explanation for culling multitudes of pokemon was that demanding development times made it too burdensome to program them all into the game. Thus, the 2019 Pokemon games would not contain national pokedexes, and it would be impossible to obtain the hundreds of pokemon not contained in the games' regional pokedex. Many were outraged to hear such an excuse, as assets for all 809 pokemon currently exist in HD and porting them to the Nintendo Switch would appear easy.

Regardless, even if porting every pokemon to Sword and Shield cannot be completed by the time of the games' release, there is no reason for Game Freak to not gradually patch in the rest of the series' adored monsters. For, if not all Pokemon are included in Sword and Shield, Game Freak will have singlehandedly alienated droves of avid fans and destroyed the competitive Pokemon scene. At the time of writing, millions of gamers from accross the world enjoy competitive pokemon battling, using all 809 pokemon in a variety of organized leagues and rule sets. By disallowing hundreds of pokemon from being used in Sword and Shield, trainers who have spent hundreds of hours perfecting their pokemon will be unable to use a substantial number of them, and Game Freak will have prevented myriad people from playing their games. Casual players will likewise be afflicted, as many of the monsters who they have grown with for the past 20 years will be left to collect dust.

If the internet outrage has not already spoken for itself, let me reiterate. We, the undersigned Pokemon fanbase, must be able to transfer all of our pokemon to Sword, Shield and beyond. If it means a longer development time, or periodic patches post-launch, we are willing to wait. Just please allow us to transfer our pokemon. If we are unable to do so, we fear that past games may be the only remaining destination for competitive play and that a truly amazing set of open-world Pokemon games, Sword and Shield, will be unable to truly shine as the definitive pokemon experience. We gotta catch 'em all, so please let us do so.