Fans Blast ‘Pokémon Champions’ Game—As Nintendo Wipes ‘Pokopia’ Stock Gains

Nintendo’s new “Pokémon Champions” game is facing a negative response from fans who say the graphics are poor and the gameplay is limited, a stark reversal from the acclaimed “Pokémon Pokopia” game it released just weeks ago, as Nintendo erases the gains “Pokopia” helped its stock make. Key Facts Nintendo and The Pokémon Company released “Pokémon Champions” on Wednesday for Switch and Switch 2 devices, with a forthcoming mobile game slated to release sometime later this year. Unlike most “Pokémon” franchise games, “Champions” is free to download for Switch devices but offers in-game purchases. But the fan response to “Champions” appears mixed-to-negative so far, with plenty of posts on X and the Pokémon subreddit describing poor graphics quality, a limited selection of Pokémon to use and other apparent glitches and gameplay limitations. Nintendo released “Champions” as it loses most of the stock gains it made following the release of “Pokopia,” which sold 2 million copies in four days and earned strong reviews, lifting Nintendo’s share price nearly 20%. Nintendo’s stock closed at its lowest level in a month in Tokyo markets on Wednesday, sliding more than 1.5% from the day prior. What Are Fans Saying About “pokémon Champions”? A primary complaint among “Pokémon” fans is the graphics on “Champions” are allegedly poor. Many fans complained the game appears to run on a 30 frames-per-second rate, slower than previous games like “Pokopia,” which reports say can run close to 60 fps. Some players reported bugs with transferring their Pokémon from the Pokémon Home app, and other gamers made posts on Reddit and X reporting what appear to be gameplay glitches. Fans also complained the game does not support the standard 6 vs. 6 battle format, in which a player and their opponent both use a full team of six Pokémon to battle one another. The game instead supports using three or four Pokémon in single or double battles. Kenneth Shepard, a writer for gaming publication Kotaku, wrote he is “astounded by the limitations” the game is placing on battling, saying it is “constricting competitive play in a way” the Pokémon series has not before. Some negative posts about “Champions” garnered attention on social media. “How many months did we wait for to get a functionally worse game?” one user posted on X alongside a video depicting an apparent in-game glitch, garnering 3 million views and 18,000 likes. Centro Leaks, a widely followed social media account that posts Pokémon news and rumors, called the game’s launch “TERRIBLE” in a post listing multiple alleged flaws, garnering 23,000 likes. Key Background The release of the tepidly received “Champions” comes just weeks after Nintendo released its best-reviewed Pokémon game to date. “Pokopia” is the best-reviewed Pokémon game on Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, with a score of 89 out of 100. The game usurped the title from “Pokemon Y,” which was released for 3DS consoles in 2013. Some gamers noted the apparent irony of Nintendo releasing a well-received and a poorly received game back-to-back. “The Pokémon Company had to balance the scales somehow after getting all that goodwill from Pokopia's success,” a top comment on Reddit states. Tangent Other pressures have caused Nintendo’s stock price to fall in recent months. Though the success of “Pokopia” gave Nintendo stock a boost after months of decline, Joost van Dreunen, CEO of gaming consulting firm Aldora and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, previously told Forbes the success of one game wouldn’t alleviate other structural concerns like the surging cost of memory chips. Increased demand for RAM memory chips by AI data centers has siphoned supply from consumer products, making these chips more expensive for game manufacturers. The gaming industry was also rocked over the past year by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which hit countries including China and Vietnam—where many gaming devices are manufactured—particularly hard, forcing some gaming companies to raise prices on their flagship consoles. Bloomberg also reported in March that Nintendo would pull back on Switch 2 console manufacturing as demand fell behind expectations during the 2025 holiday season, which caused the company’s stock to decline as much as 6% in one day. Read the full story on Forbes: By Conor Murray https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/08/fans-blast-pokmon-champions-game-as-nintendo-wipes-pokopia-stock-gains/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices