Game Freak has confirmed that a lot of the developers on Beast of Reincarnation are outsourced.
Beast of Reincarnation – the new action RPG from Pokemon developer Game Freak – had its big reveal at yesterday's Xbox Developer Direct, showing off gameplay from the upcoming title for the first time. With a Final Fantasy 7 Remake-esque combat system and a world taking cues from the likes of Nier, its safe to say it looks way more ambitious than any Pokemon release in recent memory.
Speaking to IGN, Kota Furushima, game director of Beast of Reincarnation was asked if the expanded scale of the game led to the studio scaling up in a significant way. He explains, "The team is quite large, as you can imagine, but I will note that it's not all folks internally here at Game Freak," adding that the studio, "managed to seek out a lot of partner companies to work with us, companies, studios that are able to realize the vision of this game in the way that we wanted to make it, so we're lucky to have a lot of people working on it externally as well."
IGN notes that a PR representative elaborated on this, explaining that the core Game Freak team is "relatively small," and that the members of the studio are leading the project with the majority made up of external developers. So if you saw how Beast of Reincarnation was looking and worried that it would spell the end of Pokemon being an (almost) annual franchise, it doesn't seem like there's too much to worry about.
Best of Reincarnation is part of GamesRadar+'s Big in 2026 coverage! Check out our own impressions and interview with Kota Furushima in our Beast of Reincarnation Big in 2026 feature.
