The Pokémon Company announced its next Pokémon Presents livestream will take place on August 3. The upcoming info dump on Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and other Pokémon games comes just in time as fans, desperate for new details, pour over a recent flood of alleged leaks for the earlier than expected Gen 9 entries.
The livestream is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. ET and will last roughly 20 minutes according to the experts at the Pokémon news database Serebii. That’s plenty of time to offer updates on Pokémon Go, Unite, and other spin-offs. But what fans are really hoping for is another detailed blowout on Scarlet and Violet, including more information about gym leaders, combat mechanics, and which brand new Pokémon its national Pokédex will feature.
Scarlet and Violet were announced back in February, revealing starters Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly. Another bigger reveal followed in June around the time of Not-E3 showing off two new professors and other clues about the games’ open world. Not surprisingly, however, Pokémon fans want more information ahead of the November 18 release date, and they’ve recently been turning to an unprecedented series of alleged leaks to get it.
In mid-July, players spent days pouring over blurry, incomplete screenshots purporting to show new evolutions and battle mechanics. The leaks were allegedly from someone with access to an unfinished build of the game, and included lots of clues about the total number of Pokémon that would been in the game as well as controversial design choices like gyms, which can be completed in any order, not scaling to the number of badges already collected.
Community debates and tons of fan art ensued, as well as fake leaks aimed at dunking on impatient fans. “It’s kinda Crazy what happened here,” one Pokémon theory and leak analyst who goes by 3clipse_tt on Twitter told Kotaku. “It’s more than 4 months before release this never happened if I recall. Usually it’s about 1 month before release that big leaks (especially with footage) surfaces the internet.”
Now fans will know soon enough how many of the purported leaks were legitimate or not. I’m sure the official info will keep them content for a couple weeks at least. The Pokémon Presents will be livestreamed here: