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Why Pokémon Champions Has Fans So Excited - Pros React to The Future of VGC

Cale Michael

The Pokemon Company

The Pokémon Company dropped potentially the biggest news in competitive Pokémon history on Pokémon Day this year, announcing Pokémon Champions as what appears to be an evergreen battle simulator that already has players yearning for more information.

Pokémon Champions was spotlighted during the Pokémon Day Presents on Feb. 27, getting an initial reveal trailer and very few actual details. That hasn’t stopped the competitive Pokémon community from freaking out over a full game dedicated to online battling, however. 

Pokémon Champions Could Completely Change Pokémon Esports

At a base level, The Pokémon Company COO Takato Utsunomiya says that Pokémon Champions is aiming for “core-style battles to be enjoyed by more players than ever before.” That sounds like a desire to make competitive Pokémon more accessible and open to people who likely wouldn’t have tried to learn it before. 

We don’t have a full breakdown of what will be included in Pokémon Champions or even a release date yet. We did see Mega Evolution and Terastallization in use, though it wasn’t in actual gameplay.

In the trailer, we also saw Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Battle Revolution, and double battles in Scarlet and Violet, which are shown alongside link battles in older, main series Pokémon titles. This likely hints that Champions will feature multiple formats and options for players who want to battle in specific ways, such as singles, VGC, or using specific gimmicks like Mega Pokémon.

We also got confirmation that Champions will be compatible with Pokémon HOME, meaning players can use their Pokémon from previous games to compete if they are stored in the app.

Champions is now in development for mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch family of systems, meaning TPC is opening the door to main series-style competitive battling to players outside of a Nintendo ecosystem for the first time. That alone will make it appealing to a new audience, without taking into account how it could further impact the competitive scene’s ease of access. 

Over the years, Game Freak has made competitive Pokémon easier to get into through various quality-of-life changes and new features in Pokémon games. However, training up a viable team still took time and patience, all of which could be rendered useless upon the release of a new game. 

With Champions, TPC has a chance to provide competitive players a platform to use in perpetuity using Pokémon from HOME and gimmicks from previous titles in some way. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered but, for now, this looks like a smart move from The Pokémon Company to potentially expand its pool of potential competitive talent.

Pro Player Reactions to Pokémon Champions

“This could legitimately change the game,” Wolfe Glick said in his reaction video. “One of the main barriers to entry for getting people to play competitive Pokémon is the fact that you have to get the Pokémon in-game. If there is a mode where you can just put in what you want… That could literally be one of the biggest changes for competitive Pokémon since Wi-Fi was introduced.”

Wolfe wasn’t the only player to react that strongly to Pokémon Champions being announced either, though he would go on to say that, if done properly, TPC has the chance to completely shift the future of competitive Pokémon.

“If you think about it, how many people play Pokémon but don’t know about competitive Pokémon? It is less now for sure, but there are still a lot of people,” Wolfe said. “And imagine if there was a Pokémon official title that was built around competitive battling that you could play from your phone...”

As Wolfe said, it also looks like Pokémon Champions could forgo many of the hurdles competitive Pokémon has faced when trying to get new players for years, even beyond the release on mobile, which is probably the biggest news here beyond the game itself. Champions has a chance to capitalize on the success of Pokémon’s previous mobile hits like Pokémon Go and Pokémon TCG Pocket, pulling in a new audience.

If Champions does not require players to catch and train their own teams but simply lets them use a teambuilder like Pokémon Showdown in an official capacity, competition could explode with new talent. This would lead to skyrocketing content creation around competitive battling, more eyes on Pokémon esports, and growth across the board.

Some players have noted that Champions looks like it could replace traditional Pokémon games for VGC competition. And, while there is a possibility that the game becomes a “universal” platform for battling, it isn’t as likely as you would think. Pokémon tends to bounce between releasing games that are at the center of VGC and titles that completely ignore the format completely. 

On Nintendo Switch, we saw Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus all skipped over for VGC—with Legends: Z-A certainly going to do the same. That doesn’t mean Gen 10 won’t follow Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet in having VGC competitions; it just gives The Pokémon Company more options.

We will likely see what plans TPC has for Pokémon Champions closer to release. If we don’t see Gen 10 until late 2026 or beyond, likely with a reveal coming on Pokémon Day 2026 for the franchise’s 30th anniversary, we could potentially see Champions used for an interim competitive season, or introduced as its own form of competition alongside standard VGC.

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Cale Michael
CALE MICHAEL

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