'Pokemon Presents' YouTube Video Gets Negative Internet Reaction

A video recently uploaded on The Official Pokemon YouTube Channel has been getting a disproportionate amount of dislikes compared to likes.

The video is the latest round of Pokemon Presents, where The Pokemon Company announces the latest news regarding new games, features, DLC, and other pertinent information. In the video in question, Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokemon Company, introduces the upcoming “Pokemon Unite” game.

“Pokemon Unite” will be a real-time strategy game where teams of players compete against each other to capture or destroy specific places on a map while in direct combat alongside AI-controlled opponents. If the trailer is any indication, it means Pokemon is going the “League of Legends” and “DOTA 2” route and entering the multiplayer online battle arena or MOBA arena.

Why then is this particular video getting all this hate? At the time of this story’s writing, it has 3.9 thousand thumbs up while 23,000 have given it a thumbs down as the video itself has gotten 197,360 views. Was there any specific reason for this?

Is it Ishihara-san, who begins the video by talking about the release of the quirky game “Pokemon Café Mix?’ Is it the partnership that The Pokemon Company entered into with Tencent Games to develop “Pokemon Unite?” Could it be hatred toward Tencent Senior Vice President Steven Ma, who also talks in the video about how they’ve tapped Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studios based in Shenzhen China to develop the game?

Ishihara later adds that the idea behind “Pokemon Unite” was to create a game that could be picked up by anyone immediately and, since TiMi Studios specializes in team-based battle games, it was a natural partnership that was formed.

Yet a quick look at the comments section of the video provides the simplest answer. “ This probably wouldn't have gotten nowhere near the amount of hate it does if they would have just combined it with last week's announcement instead of hyping it up as its own announcement,” posted Do Boy’s Garage.

Users Cornelius Hai, Gizmo Hey, and The Meme Guy all pointed out, though, that “Pokemon Unite” should have been introduced during last week’s round of Pokemon Presents. Instead, they would have preferred if “Pokemon Snap,” (a game where players take pictures of Pokemon and collect them) got this solo treatment instead.

For user liam123abc, it boiled down to this: “The more money Pokemon makes, the less money they are willing to put into their products.” That comment has gotten 888 likes and counting.

“I'm not upset that they didn't announce remakes or anything like that, I'm upset that they hyped this up for a week,” said HighPricedManiac, a comment that has gotten 971 likes. Perhaps The Pokemon Company should give these comments some consideration for the next Pokemon Presents session in order to please their audience.