Jack of All Controllers

In an interview with VGC, Masayuki Onore of Game Freak talked a little bit about what life is like at Game Freak outside of Pokemon. Firstly, his team is known as Production Team 1 and it is the main focus for the company. Gear Project is what they’re working on, a collection of games like Giga Wrecker, Tembo the Badass Elephant, the upcoming RPG Town, alongside much more.

Onore-san had the following to say:

There are two different production teams here, simply named Production Team 1 and Production Team 2,” Onoue explained. “Team 1 is fully dedicated to Gear Project, while Team 2 is for the Pokémon operation.” What that means is that Game Freak as a company is prioritizing Gear Project, which is production team number 1, more than Pokémon in general. We are always trying to create something that is equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon. There is a lot of back-and-forth between Team 1 and Team 2. One of the interesting things is that Team 2, which is dedicated to Pokémon, only knows about specific platforms. So with Team 2, engineers can learn about other platforms that they might not have touched before. By mixing up the teams we are able to create this interesting synergy.

-Masayuki Onore, Director at Game Freak Production Team 1

Onore-san confirmed that he is working on multiple projects but didn’t say what they were, all we know about is Town. This also allows the studio to make games for platforms outside of Nintendo, like Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

Pokemon: Sword and Pokemon: Shield are the next titles from this studio due out in November 15th, 2019. Town is also scheduled for this year.