Nintendo Finally Acknowledges Pokémon’s Buggy State In New Update

In a rare turn of events, Nintendo has (sort of) acknowledged the various performance issues with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet publicly.

In a tweet on the official NOA account, Nintendo has announced that a software update for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will release on December 1st (technically tomorrow for us Australians), stating that they “take the feedback from players seriously, and will continue to work on improvements to the games.”

A software update for #PokemonScarletViolet (Ver. 1.1.0) will be released on 12/1. Please visit our website for more information: https://t.co/4kh6Dtui4c

We take the feedback from players seriously, and will continue to work on improvements to the games.

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 1, 2022

The website linked in the tweet takes you to the Nintendo Support page that explains how to update Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, although it took a WHILE for it to load before hitting me with a 502 Bad Gateway error. Seems like a lot of people are interested in just what Nintendo had to say. At the time of publication, however, the site seems to be back up and running.

The version 1.1.0 update for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which is around a whopping 1GB, will include the following:

• Season 1 of Ranked Battles will kick off, allowing you to enjoy Ranked Battles through the Battle Stadium.
  • Please check the in-game notice for more details about Ranked Battles Season 1.
• An issue has been fixed that caused the music to not play correctly during the battles with the Elite Four and the Top Champion in the Victory Road path.
• Other select bug fixes have been made.

Nintendo followed up these patch notes with the following statement:

We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games’ performance. Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.

It’s VERY rare for Nintendo to make a public statement when it comes to the quality of one of its flagship titles, preferring to keep its head down and quietly make fixes instead. It’s quite interesting that they’ve gone with ‘other select bug fixes’ as a blanket statement rather than going into detail on which fixes the patch makes. It could be that there are simply too many — with an update weighing in at 1GB, notably large for Nintendo, it may be that the fix list is rather long.

Performance issues aside, it looks like Pokémon fans are still enjoying the game. While many believe that fans should up their standards, I can’t help but be impressed with the Pokémon world’s acceptance of a clearly buggy game. They treat it like an elderly family dog that’s lost control of its bowels. Sure, it’s shitting all over the place, but it’s an important part of your life that’s always been there. You can’t help but love it.