Pokémon Champions Director Vows to Keep Turn-Based Battles Forever as Stadium-Style Modes Stay Out

SAN FRANCISCO — Masaaki Hoshino says he wants classic Pokémon battling to last "forever," and he does not plan to dilute that mission with a single-player campaign.

Hoshino, director of Pokémon Champions, told Video Games Chronicle that the free-to-start battler on Nintendo Switch and mobile phones exists to preserve turn-based combat even as mainline role-playing games experiment with other styles. The comments came as the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco used Champions as the exclusive video-game platform, drawing what VGC described as a packed arena and a global audience.

"Personally, I love Pokémon battles, and part of the reason why I joined The Pokémon Company is for Pokémon battles," Hoshino said. "I would love to keep turn-based battles around like forever, regardless of other Pokémon battle styles out there. From that standpoint, I believe that as long as Pokémon Champions is around, turn-based battles will be kind of preserved and will continue forever."

That is the product's charter. Champions launched on Nintendo Switch on April 8, 2026, and on iOS and Android on June 17. The Pokémon Company said save data can move between console and phone if players use the same Nintendo Account. Official events shifted onto the game during the spring, and the World Championships on Aug. 28-30 made the change official at the highest level. The company has already said next year's Worlds will stay on Champions even after Pokémon Winds and Waves arrive.

Kazumasa Iwao, listed as a game director on Champions, said earlier that the title was built in part for players who have "been enjoying the existing style of Pokémon battle for decades." Shigeki Morimoto, Game Freak's longtime battle designer, has echoed that the traditional system still needs a home. Hoshino's interview puts a harder line under that idea: the format is not a stopgap. It is the point.

He is also trying to grow the audience beyond veterans. Mobile brought "an influx of a lot of first-time players," he said, which is why the roster is limited. "I don't want to make Champions too daunting for these new players. So some of the Pokémon are being selected based on ease of use." More demanding creatures can come later. For now, he said, the capped list and current ruleset have produced "a pretty good meta environment," visible in the Worlds bracket as players invent new combinations.

The onboarding problem is the other half of that bet. Asked whether the tutorial does enough, Hoshino said length is a trap. "In terms of the tutorial, the longer it becomes, the more likely someone is to drop out in the middle of it. So we don't necessarily want to lengthen the tutorial. That being said, the in-game assist probably could be better than it is right now. So someone who is new would be able to have a little more support when they actually battle."

What he will not add, at least soon, is the offline Stadium-style content many fans still want. Pokémon Stadium is an inspiration, he said. It is not the roadmap. "For the time being, we probably won't be adding additional modes similar to Pokémon Stadium," Hoshino said. "The reason is if you start adding a lot of single-player modes, that kind of moves people away from the PvP, and that actually increases the match time, which makes it a little more difficult for a PvP game. So at least while more people are increasingly playing, I want to focus on PvP for the time being."

That choice will disappoint players who treat a Pokémon battle game as a toy box rather than a ranked ladder. It is consistent with how official competition now works. Champions is online outside a few tutorials. Matchmaking and server-side calculations are the product. In a separate interview with ScreenRant during Worlds, Hoshino called cross-platform play between Switch and phones "the trickiest thing," noting that battle calculations run on the server. He also said he was watching Worlds not only as a fan but as a developer who might adjust viewing tools and balance after seeing the event live.

The mechanical future is more open than the mode list. Hoshino has previously described a dream version of Champions in which series gimmicks — Z-Moves, Mega Evolution, Gigantamax and the rest — exist together. Mega Evolution is already in the game, including newer forms such as Mega Absol Z and Mega Lucario Z that were highlighted around Worlds. Asked when the next gimmick arrives, he slowed down.

"For the time being, we'll probably stick to Mega Evolution, but definitely want to add more in the future," he said. New players are meeting Mega Pokémon for the first time, he added, so the current environment should stay familiar. Additional systems are "undecided, but under consideration." If they arrive, the team still has to test whether they replace Mega Evolution or run beside it, "depending on how difficult it is."

The company is already feeding the live roster. After Worlds, Play! Pokémon confirmed Regulation Set M-C would run from Sept. 9 to Dec. 2, 2026, with more Pokémon and Mega Evolutions, including Z Mega forms introduced in Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Champions passed 20 million downloads across Switch and mobile as of an Aug. 2 announcement. Those numbers matter to Hoshino's argument that the player base is still growing and should not be split across a campaign.

The competitive result of the first Champions Worlds is now on the record. Takuma Yamazaki beat Hiroshi Onishi in the VGC finals with a team that included Mega Floette, Mega Dragonite, Kingambit, Sneasler, Basculegion and Garchomp. For Hoshino, the trophy is less important than the proof of concept: a dedicated battler can host the sport, look better on a broadcast than last year's Scarlet and Violet setup, and still leave room for newcomers on a phone.

The series has spent three decades teaching turn order, type charts and prediction. Mainline games are no longer obligated to carry that classroom into every new generation. Champions is the classroom now. Hoshino's public brief is simple. Keep the turns. Keep the matches flowing. Teach the new players without a novel-length tutorial. Leave Stadium in the archive until the online crowd is so large that an offline mode would not thin it.

Whether that bargain holds will show up in ranked queues and in next year's Worlds, not in a single interview. For the moment, the person running the game has said the quiet part plainly. Turn-based Pokémon battling is the product he joined the company to protect. As long as Champions exists, he said, that style "will continue forever."