The Pokemon Company Wants to Raise Pokemon Game Prices, Leak Suggests

The Pokemon Company has wanted to raise the price of Pokemon games since the initial release of Pokemon Sword and Shield on the Switch, new documentation reportedly shows, but external factors that are no longer at play prevented the company from doing so. Without those external factors, fans can expect Pokemon Winds and Waves to cost more—although the exact price has not been revealed yet and likely will not be for a few months or into 2027.

It’s worth noting that Nintendo has significantly altered its pricing strategy since the release of the Switch 2, although sales are still incredibly rare. Primarily, Nintendo has made it so that digital games are ~$10 cheaper than physical games (while PlayStation and Xbox appear to be phasing out physical games). It’s not certain how this price change will factor into Pokemon Winds and Waves’ physical and digital sales, but the baseline price will almost certainly be higher based on economic factors, even before considering the latest information.

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The Pokemon Company Wants You to Pay More for Pokemon Games

Known aggregate social media account Centro Leaks recently shared documentation from the infamous Pokemon teraleak, which had flown under the radar at the time because of the completely different economic situation, and it reportedly shows that the company wanted to raise the price of Pokemon games since Pokemon Sword and Shield. However, the main reason it did not at the time was allegedly that a higher video game price had not been standardized in North America (a primary market). Because no competition had done so at the time, The Pokemon Company refrained from doing so.

Since then, not only has the standardized price gone up across most games, but even higher prices are being shopped around on some games. Mario Kart World, for example, released at a crisp $80, and the simple fact is GTA 6 is a $100 game with a cheaper $80 option. Economic factors aside, Pokemon’s popularity could see it adopt a price similar to GTA 6 with little-to-no repercussions. Where the price of the massive open-world games in Pokemon Winds and Waves settles remains to be seen, but there’s no reason to believe that it won’t be raising prices (or matching recent highs at least) given that Sword and Shield was 7 years ago.

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Image via The Pokemon Company

Image via Game Freak

Image via The Pokemon Company

Also noted in the documentation is how The Pokemon Company wanted to encourage folks to buy both versions of Pokemon games, something seen in recent mainline releases with the double packs. That’s not surprising, even if the spirit of the two versions is encouraging folks to play together. Still, according to the reported sales data in this documentation, which likely has specific parameters that are not included, 41% of customers bought both Pokemon Sun and Moon, 50% of customers bought both Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon, and only 23% of customers bought both Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee.

Find the odd one out before the timer hits zero.

Easy (15s)
Medium (10s)
Hard (5s)
Permadeath (5s)

Start

Round 1

Which one doesn’t belong?

0/10

Results

0/5

Best: 0/5

—

While this documentation is “new” in that it was rediscovered in the more recent teraleak, it’s worth mentioning that this dates back to between 2018 and 2020 (or so). It’s entirely possible that the Pokemon Company has changed its mind; it’s entirely possible it hasn’t, but it should come as no surprise to anyone, barring this documentation or otherwise, when Pokemon Winds and Waves possibly cost more than $60 or $70.