Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are among the most anticipated games of 2022, and they will be coming out the day following the third anniversary of Pokemon Sword and Shield. Gen 8 was hardly considered great by many fans who weren't happy about the so-called "Dexit," which meant that only around 400 critters ended up being in the Galarian Pokdex compared to the total of 905 species as of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's leaked Pokedex seems to be continuing the same trend, this time with more new pocket monsters being added to the base game, up to a total of 103, not including regional forms and DLC creatures.

Adding 103 new Pokemon species in Gen 9 is a big deal because it's the highest amount of critters added since Gen 5, with Generations 6 through 8 featuring less than that, especially in the case of Pokemon X and Y with only 72 new entries. While this is good in terms of pure numbers, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's revealed Pokemon count ahead of lunch is just 19, and this number stacks up very poorly against previous mainline games in the franchise. The reveal cycle for Gen 9 has been extremely dry, to the point that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's marketing came from leaks more than it did from actual trailers, and one month from launch the numbers are not improving a lot.

RELATED: Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Free Exploration Seems Less So By The Day

How Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Limited Reveals Stack Up Against Past Generations

pokemon scarlet violet development cycle gen 5 remakes legends arceus sequel diamond pearl

Three months from launch, Scarlet and Violet had revealed 12 new Pokemon, and the latest addition to the roster back then was Cyclizar from the trailer at the World Championships. Now, one month from launch, that number has grown by 7 critters, which means that in the past two months The Pokemon Company kept being silent a tad too much compared to past news cycles.

The data gathered by the creator of Serebii.net, Joe Merrick, focuses on the amount of Pokemon revealed in each generation and shows how limited Scarlet and Violet information have been. Pokemon X and Y featured a total of 29 critters and seven Mega Evolutions revealed 50 days before launch. At the same milestone, Pokemon Sun and Moon had revealed a total of 46 new pocket monsters and ten regional forms, with Gen 7 being considered the one where The Pokemon Company went overboard with the marketing before launch. Finally, 50 days before release, Pokemon Sword and Shield's amount of revealed critters was 20 monsters and three regional forms.

Why Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Should Have Revealed More Critters

pokemon scarlet violet open world free exploration koraidon miraidon legends arceus travel

Comparing this to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet shows how drastically different the marketing for Gen 9 has been over the months, as 50 days before launch The Pokemon Company only had a total of 16 revealed pocket monsters and just one regional form. In the weeks that followed, only Farigiraf and Bellibolt were revealed, taking that number to 19 total. This is an astonishingly low number for a new mainline game, and one that raises questions. For example, fans are wondering why Scarlet and Violet's Paradox Pokemon haven't been revealed yet when, according to leaks, they are an important part of the game.

As it stands, it's quite likely that creatures like Paradox Pokemon, the middle stages of the starters' evolution lines, and other creatures won't be revealed at all before launch. There's a chance that The Pokemon Company could simply showcase a few more monsters before release and just let players explore the Paldea region and its fauna on their own, but this can also be problematic when it comes to things like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's version exclusives. Overall, it seems that the Gen 7 reveal cycle was an outlier, and the current trend is that of showing as little as possible, a theory that seems especially convincing after Gen 8 and Pokemon Legends: Arceus.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are set to release on November 18, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.

MORE: How Bellibolt's Electromorphosis Could Shape Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Meta