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Famitsu published an interview with several key staff members behind Pokemon Pokopia. One of those members is Game Freak’s Shigeru Ohmori, who explained the origins behind the conception of the Pokemon Pokopia game.
Shigeru Ohmori is being credited as the concept creator and senior director of Pokemon Pokopia. He made the initial ideas before receiving feedback and support from people around him at Game Freak.
Ohmori first decided to have Ditto as the new game’s protagonist, as it can transform into a human, which allows it to use tools that normal Pokemon cannot utilize. Ditto can also learn techniques from other Pokemon, such as learning how to make a grass patch from Bulbasaur. The results from these learned techniques would allow Ditto to meet more Pokemon species and learn even more techniques.
However, Shigeru Ohmori noted that the early build of Pokemon Pokopia felt more like a simulator than a sandbox. After finishing the first trial build for Pokopia while exploring additional gameplay elements, The Pokemon Company invited Koei Tecmo to further refine the game.
Koei Tecmo had previously worked on Pokemon Conquest for Nintendo DS, but Kanako Murata from The Pokemon Company clarified that her company simply picked Koei Tecmo as the best partner for developing Pokemon Pokopia. Koei Tecmo would then elect the Omega Force team to handle this, and Omega Force’s Takuto Edagawa noted that this game’s development takes the largest—albeit unspecified—number of staff members from the team.
While Omega Force is developing Pokemon Pokopia under supervision by Game Freak, The Pokemon Company provides development support while taking charge of the game’s promotions and localizations to languages other than Japanese. The localization processes are notably more hectic for Pokopia compared to other Pokemon games, as the companies want to properly convey the distinct dialects of each Pokemon in every language featured.
Pokemon Pokopia will be available for Nintendo Switch 2 on March 5, 2026.
