New ‘Pokemon’ Games Hinted at for 3DS and DS

It’s been a pretty good year thus far for North American fans of the immensely popular Pokemon franchise, and there’s no debating that Pokemon is a juggernaut in the gaming world. The legions of Poke-peeps are surely content with what is currently available and what will be hitting the market this year, but according to Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara, there are still many more surprises left in store for the second half of 2011.

During an interview with Japanese gaming mag Famitsu, Ishihara dropped a teaser for a few upcoming Pokemon-related announcements.  He also took the liberty of stating that the Pokemon brand hasn’t turned its back on DS-owners quite yet, and that The Pokemon Company likes to “keep DS gamers close” in their minds. That seems like a pretty encouraging thing to hear for those who have yet to take the plunge and purchase a 3DS, but those who have also have some very cool content coming their way.

“To be honest, there isn’t much I can tell you yet, sadly.However, I can tell you that we’ve got just as many surprises in store for the second half of 2011 as we had for the first half, so keep an eye out for us. I don’t think every Nintendo DS use has immediately upgraded to the 3DS, so while we’d like to keep DS gamers close in our minds, we also want to show people how much the world of Pokémon can be expanded with the 3DS’s feature set.”

Given the fact that Nintendo only announced Pokemon Rumble Blast yesterday, it comes as a bit of a shock to hear that there are still unannounced Pocket Monster games coming in the second half of this year. Unfortunately, the unannounced projects will likely be coming to Japan first, meaning that North America probably won’t be receiving the titles until next year at the earliest. As gamers may recall, the same thing happened with Pokemon Black and White – those games ended up releasing in North America six months later than they did in Japan.

Still, the prospect of having new Pokemon games on both the Nintendo DS and 3DS is an exciting idea, and it’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo plans on generating interest in both handhelds in spite of recent lacklustre sales.

-

Follow me on Twitter @GnarleySquid

Sources: Andriasang, 1up