The development and release of Pokémon Black and White 2 for the aging DS left many fans scratching their heads, hungry for something on the 3DS that would reflect the system's power and encourage development for the franchise. As of early this morning, those fans have their wish.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata led off the Pokémon-centric edition of Nintendo Direct with a trip through the now-iconic franchise's past, highlighting the main releases of each console generation, the new features each brought to the table, and how they interacted with the hardware of the time. Iwata also made mention of the localization delay between Japanese and Western releases of each title, a detail not usually called to the forefront in such official statements.
His motives for this were soon clear, though, as the final few minutes of the presentation gave way to a full-on video preview of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the two titles in what will be the sixth Pokémon generation. Not only will these games give players 3D cel-shaded graphics for the first time in the main Pokémon series, but it will do so simultaneously worldwide. Iwata promised that the new titles would see store shelves in Japan, America, Europe, and Australia this October.
Several new Pokémon were also shown in part or in full in the course of the preview, including the trio of new starters and what appear to be the main pair of legendaries that will likely grace the covers of X and Y later this year. No mention has yet been made of how many new monsters the games will introduce.
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