Game Freak built Pokémon Champions to preserve turn-based battles as the series moves on

Game Freak has confirmed what many fans suspected: the classic turn-based battle system that has defined Pokémon for 30 years may not stick around in mainline games much longer. In a video on the studio's YouTube channel, game designer Shigeki Morimoto and Pokémon Champions co-director Kazumasa Iwao explained that Pokémon Champions exists specifically to give competitive players a permanent home for the traditional format — freeing future games to experiment.

Morimoto was direct about the reasoning. "The battle system, the rules for competitive Pokémon battles that we've been using throughout the Pokémon series for so long, may gradually start changing as the Pokémon series moves forward," he said. Rather than simply telling long-time fans to adapt to whatever comes next, Game Freak wanted a dedicated space where the format that's been around since Red and Green could live on indefinitely. Iwao echoed that: the team didn't want to neglect the existing system, but also didn't want it to hold back the series from taking on new challenges.

The shift has already started. Legends: Z-A, which launched on Switch and Switch 2 last year, replaced turn-based combat with real-time mechanics that forced players to rethink decades of ingrained habits — and split the fanbase sharply. Some loved the fresh approach; others felt it gutted what made Pokémon battles worth caring about. Pokémon Champions, the standalone competitive simulator, now looks like Game Freak's answer to that tension: keep the classic rules alive in one place, and let the RPGs evolve without being anchored to them.

Neither Morimoto nor Iwao got specific about what future battle systems might look like. Leaks circulating online suggest the next mainline entries — reportedly titled Winds and Waves — will return to turn-based combat, so the full pivot may still be a generation or two away. But the message from Game Freak is clear enough: Champions is the home for old-school battles, and the mainline series is no longer bound to them.