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Chinese publishing giant Tencent has its fingers in a lot of video game pies already, and now it seems that one of its subsidiaries, TIMI Studio Group, has partnered with The Pokemon Company. According to a statement shared on Twitter (and translated by Japanese game consultant Serkan Toto), TIMI has assumed development of an unrevealed Pokemon game.
Tencent specializes in free-to-play games, and TIMI in particular is best known for Arena of Valor, a free-to-play mobile MOBA. The studio is currently working on Call of Duty Mobile, which will also be free-to-play when it officially launches later this year. As such, there's reason to believe this new Pokemon game will be a free-to-play mobile game as well. However, it's worth noting that Arena of Valor is also available for free on Switch, so it's not unprecedented for TIMI's games to be released on console.
Whatever it is, we can trust that TIMI's mystery Pokemon game will be distinct from Pokemon's other mobile offerings, namely Pokemon Go and the newly revealed Pokemon Masters. This actually raises a fairly interesting question, because Pokemon Go is a big collect-athon and Pokemon Masters looks to be very battle- and co-op-heavy, so what's left to focus on? A Pokemon breeding game? A Pokemon MOBA a la Heroes of the Storm? Pokemon Snap 2?! Oh please let it be Pokemon Snap 2. Mobile could actually be a great fit for that, and hell, I would play it even if it was exclusive to Samsung refrigerators.
There's a lot of Pokemon games on the horizon, and Pokemon Sword and Shield are handily the most exciting of the bunch.
