The Pokémon Sword And Shield Live Stream Is Now Over

Blink once and you're up for three more hours of nothing.

Don't know if this marketing is brilliant or not. All I know is that there are probably some people crazy enough to have watched the whole thing.

I stuck around for an hour last night trying to keep my fellow no-livers amused. (much love lol)

I don't think I have ever wanted to see a swarm of Zubat so badly in my life.

What a dull and stupid marketing exercise. Initially, I was under the impression that we were going to see 24 hours of gameplay footage (albeit limited to a couple of early routes to avoid giving too much away). If anything, I suspect that this endeavour would have only served to put more people off from the games. This reminds me that "bonus episode" of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad that was included with the first of the four Futurama movies on DVD back in the day, and it had a similar gimmick, though that ran at a comparatively merciful 22 minutes.

If it literally just ends that would be so funny

I think this is a really neat marketing strategy, and I could see this being a tactic where they could pull in other regions of the game as well.

Except that in actuality there's not nearly enough substance in this stream to really make this idea work. A for effort, but F for being entertaining. I'm going to go watch a nest of owl eggs to see when they'll hatch, now

“You guys care so much about tree shapes and tree textures that you’re gonna spend a whole day looking at them!” - Game Freak, apparently

Wow the camera shut down and then u could hear the scream of a Rapidash

they could have atleast shown it after this 24 hours

Galarian Ponyta looks so cool!

Was this a punishment for complaints? 24 hours of mostly nothing just for ONE new pokemon reveal?

I really don't understand this game's marketing. Just seems to lose hype every month.

Galarian Weezing, Galarian Ponyta, and SirFetch’d certainly make for some good stuff in Galar.

It was a complete waste of our time. It should have been maybe 10 hours at max and still had all of the “sightings” on offer. I hope this never happens for another gen, and once again this is a bad idea from GameFreak. They just can’t get anything right lately can they?

Thought it was a neat idea. People getting so mad that it wasn't what they wanted is hilarious

@Quarth I would say it was A-grade trolling by GameFreak. 😄

@WiltonRoots Payback for complaining about that one tree in wild area: making us stare at trees for 24 hours.

It was exciting as watching paint dry now the real question is what kind of poor soul would do it

I thought it was fine. I really just wish we’d seen the ponyta (and other species) interacting more with each other. Ponyta, at least, are supposed to be herd creature, right? At least we got some of that at the end. (Two floofs does not a herd make. Although I would also like to petition that we rename Gen VIII Gen FLOOF. We’ve got Wooloo, Cottonee, Alcremie, and now Galarian Ponyta... there’s so much floofiness in this Gen.).

Also, it probably would have been better to have shortened it to four hours or so. I think it was good that it tried to mimic actual wildlife observation studies but the gamer mentality isn’t as patient on average as that of the scientist.

I waited 24 hours to see a Snorlax vore the camera, and it never happened. A complete waste of time >

Galarian Rabidash should have been shown too, that would have made it more interesting. Showing only one Pokémon didn’t justify a 24 stream.

Yeah, couldn't keep up with it but was checking the Serebii Twitter
Those Ponytas are so cute, for sure I'll train one
Must've been cool if somebody were just casually looking at the feed and saw them

@WiltonRoots Yeah, probably to piss the haters off even more. 🤣

This was probably the most boring live stream I have ever witnessed. It's like GameFreak is deliberately attempting to kill the hype. Or what's left of it anyway.

Buttstallion confirmed 😂

Didn't expect much from it so I didn't bother watching it for long. I'm actually glad they've kept their reveals pretty minimal. I hope it stays that way and I can go in mostly blind.

Had a feeling this was the way it was gonna turn out. Glad I didn't take part. They really should've condensed this into an hour. Maybe 2 or 3 hours tops, but not a whole day.

Saying that though, that pair of Galarian Ponytas were adorable. I wonder what'll make them different from regular Ponyta.

Rainbow Galarian Ponyta made this stream that I was completely uninterested in 100% worth it.

Was it excessive? Yes. The complaints are valid. But one thing they did right was build up toward Galarian Ponyta. Instead of just coming out in a trailer and revealing it outright, they kept us guessing for hours. Could they have done it another way? Probably. But I don't even care at this point, because I got my rainbow Ponyta that I've wanted forever!

You waited all that time, for what? A new my little pony toy

Besides it kinda looking like the famous toy, I do like Galarian Ponyta. I was actually lucky enough that I forgot about this stream and watched only the last 10 minutes. I feel real bad for those people who stayed up all night for this.

This was pointless but it did its job. People are talking about it. In the end that's what marketing is meant to do.

Personally, My Little Ponyta is super cute and I can't wait to see was Gallarian Rapidash is gonna look like!

Right now, I feel like it's pure fairy. I'd have prefered Fire/Fairy or Fairy/"something else" but it is still real neat! If it is pure fairy type, I really hope they've added a new physical fairy move for it to learn at the lower levels.

If it only has play rough, then this will be another one trick pony... Just like the original Rapidash, which just had flare blitz, mega horn and, like, stomp...

I just did what I do with every nature livestream, waited for someone to post the exciting bits on YouTube or Reddit. That Ponyta was up on Reddit like 60 seconds after it showed up "on camera".

This was an excellent marketing gimmick, though. It doesn't even matter to them if people were actually watching the stream or doing what I did. The goal was to have people talking about it, and here we are.

“It did it’s job bc people are talking about it.” Is it actually good marketing if you just make your viewers mad?

@JasmineDragon I guess that explains why GF cut the national dex. Why make something entertaining when controversy will get more people talking?

@gloom But it didn't "just make viewers mad", because hardly anybody was actually sitting there watching the whole thing (I mean, did ANYBODY actually do that? 24 hours in front of your screen waiting for a rare Pokemon to show up?)

Judging by the responses everywhere I've looked, most people are excited by the Ponytas, and talking about the possibility of a whole Fairy type forest, and maybe Rapidash will evolve into an alicorn, and whatnot. That's what Nintendo wanted.

Dunno, maybe this stream was supposed to stimulate how exciting the game will be? If so, bravo. slow clap

Though at least they did good in pissing loads of people off, if that was their goal.

Cya
Raziel-chan

This is a total Kanye West move. This settles it... Gamefreak is pretty much the Kanye West of the gaming industry now.

huh, so the new pokemon this time is the love child of a uni neopet & a rapidash...

@Silly_G Haha I bought the separate edition dvd that had that bonus episode... Not worth it. XD

I tuned in on here, thought I was early or was witnessing an interval when nothing happened, so came back some number of hours later and figured I missed it... The chat wasn't working on here so I went to YT and saw people talking about how something "might" happen then some girl came bsck and was like "What did I miss?!?!" And so I came up with some elaborate story of Dittos transforming into sudowoodos and other mon and said it was the best and most mind blowing thing I'd ever witnessed. It changed my perspective on life... She was asking for more details and was annoyed at how she missed "the best bit". Really it was all equally bad. So, then I knew I'd had the maximum amount of fun that stream would give me and swiftly exited, waiting for a catch up I knew NintendoLife would provide. Many thanks.

@Tsurii Bad opinion! One of the lamest marketing pushes I've seen in a while.

@gloom

It shoulda been no longer then 10 minutes for a literal handful of Pokemon. Only one of which was a known native. Gamefreak you stink.

I hope habitat observation is part of the actual game 😆 If not it should be it’s own spinoff- a cross between Pokémon Snap and that video

While I 100% understand and even agree with some on the cynicism towards Sword and Shield's development, I can't wrap my head around the people saying this was a waste of time and should've been cut down significantly.

Did... did y'all really think they intended for everyone to watch the whole thing or something?

imagine you're a big enough loser that you spent all of yesterday either A. watching the entire 24 hour stream or B. judging it as if it was going to be anything more than the reveal of 1 new Pokemon

your life must be so vapid that you care this much about a marketing tactic that you never needed to take part in to begin with

@Tempestryke awwww poor baby

@gloom what's to really be mad about tho? grow up

@Emperor_Xanatos wrong! your opinion is trash because I work in marketing and can definitely confirm this tactic worked well

the fact you're complaining shows that it worked well

it just didn't do what you and a small but LOUD group of people wanted it to do, what a shame..

I mean, really Pokemon Company? What was the point.

@LowRyder Most of us didn't watch all or most of it that's true. People are annoyed with the quality of it. That's not hard to understand. You got a new region with new pokemon, show off the new pokemon. 10 minutes of showing off lots of new things, is going to have more of a positive impact then showing off 24 hours of barely anything.

Glad I went about my life and just waited for actual news to be posted instead of watching

This was a great idea in theory, and getting players together like this had a fun community feeling to it, but like others have said, the execution was extremely flawed.

Yes, it was simulating a nature cam, and sometimes in nature not a lot happens in a static area, but the difference is that this is not real nature, and they are in full control of everything that happens. If they do this again, then Game Freak needs to invest in more model rendering and more interactions instead of looking at a stagnant, glowing wallpaper for 5 hours straight, followed by one single Phantump floating by, followed by 2 more hours of absolutely nothing.

I probably watched if for less then 5 mins.... nd thought. Yea, the loop of the same cords in music and looped background noise was just not enough for me to stay interested. If they had actual muaic, then I would of played it in the background. Good thing I had homework to distract me haha.
The fairy Ponyta is cute!

Glad I didn't even bother actually looking up what was revealed either. 24 hours just to show a my little pony pokemon lmao.

@Tempestryke I think a certain level of disappointment is understandable sure. Myself somewhat included in that camp as well. Some reactions rub me the wrong way however, such as using this as another example of Gamefreak's deteriorating quality. Sure only one new Pokemon was shown, but the actual presentation and animation quality during certain points was quite nice.

I'm not necessarily really trying to defend Gamefreak here either. I think they should be criticized 100%, however they should be criticized when it's warranted, otherwise the fanbase just comes across as whiny babies any time they do literally anything. Peeps should save the soapbox complaints for when it is truly warranted, and this is not one of those times if you ask me.

lol what at troll

This could've been so much more.

One thing I must commend Game Freak for is that seemingly for the first time in many years, they haven't already shown off literally everything and everyone in the new games months before the games are released. In previous years, there have been endless trailers and articles full of "hey, here are all the new Pokémon", but this time they've barely shown off anything. That, at least, is a change for the better.

@Silly_G I remember watching that DVD religiously back in the day. Practically every day after school I'd watch it

@Tsurii spot on 👌🏻

didnt watch the live stream at all, but with only one new pokemon reveal in 24 hours i genuinely cant tell if this was a troll move or not

If the environment was animated and all that, it could've been a neat screensaver app.

That said, the whole thing was extremely stupid and pointless, but at least we had some fun with the memes.

Like the idea in spirit. The execution just didn't stick the landing.

I'm not necessarily against the run time. I get it was probably set up that way to allow everyone around the world to have an opportunity to watch. But at the same time, there was way too much dead air and could have used quite a bit more activity.

Especially considering there's a huge part of the fanbase that doesn't necessarily have the patience to wait 45 minutes for a Pokémon to appear

That new Pokémon certainly looks like a Galarian Ponyta, but what if it isn't? I mean, the only similarities I can find with Ponyta are the basic shape and eyes, and for some reason one of them doesn't even have a tail!

And if it was a Galarian Ponyta, what if its evolution isn't actually a Galarian Rapidash? What if... okay, enough is enough.

@graysoncharles
I would rather not listen to them until the game releases, but even if its a Ponyta cry, I would usually expect a surprise when there's not official statement yet...