President and CEO of the Pokemon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, hosted a short seven minute Pokemon Direct on February 27th, 2019 announcing that later this year the Nintendo Switch will receive Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield.

The upcoming titles will be brand new adventures set within the Pokemon universe, featuring brand new locations to visit, new Pokemon to capture, and gameplay mechanics to utilize.

You can check out the announcement trailer and the Nintendo Direct for Pokemon Sword and Shield below.

Visually the game looks like a slightly improved version of Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Pokemon: Let’s Go Eevee.

We see that there are three new biomes that players will be able to visit, along with three new Pokemon to acquire at the start of the game. This includes Grookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble. Grookey is a grass type, Scorbunny is a fire type, and Sobble is a water type.

The game will take place within the Galar region, featuring lots of large plains, a bustling industrial metropolis, and a snowy mountain region.

We didn’t get to see much as far as combat was concerned, but the capture and combat mechanics were somewhat criticized in the Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee games since they were lifted from Niantic Labs’ Pokemon Go, a gameplay-lite mobile game.

If Nintendo focuses a little bit more on utilizing the Joy-Cons this time around, especially for the combat and capture techniques, it would likely go a long way in making the game feel a lot more replayable and in-depth compared to the last two outings. There are still more things yet to be revealed for the upcoming games, but we’ll have to wait later into the year before they’re announced. I’m pretty sure we’ll likely see a lot more at this year’s E3.

Both Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield will be released during late 2019 (likely the holiday season) exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the official website.