The Pokémon Company has confirmed a free expansion for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet is due for release next month.
The news came via a brief teaser trailer titled “A new adventure in the Land of Kitakami awaits”.
The 40-second teaser, featuring footage of our plucky gang of trainers looking worried, doesn’t give much away but it does confirm that the expansion will act as an epilogue to the storyline of the two-part The Hidden Treasure Of Area Zero Expansion Pass.
The update is due for release January 11 2024 at 14:00 UTC, while another update featuring a number of bug fixes will be released late January (via Nintendolife).
To access the free epilogue, players will need to have completed the main storyline in both The Teal Mask expansion and The Indigo Disk, which was released last week.
Back in August, it was revealed The Pokémon Company was talking about slowing down the rate that Pokémon games are released.
“If you look at the past, the path we’ve taken up until now has been this constant release, always regularly releasing products on a fairly fixed kind of a cadence,” said chief operating officer Takato Utsunomiya. “I think we’re still operating in that way, but there’s more and more conversations, as the development environments change, about how we can continue to do this, while making sure that we’re ensuring really quality products are also being introduced,” he added.
Utsunomiya was speaking at the Pokémon World Championships, which also saw announcements for Pokémon Go, Pokémon TCG and Pokémon Sleep alongside extra events to promote the then-imminent launch of The Hidden Treasure Of Area Zero expansion.
Pokémon also recently released its new Netflix series, Pokémon Concierge. In a four-star review, NME wrote: “Though Pikachu and Ash have and will forever be the true mascot duo of the franchise, Concierge proves that there are endless stories begging to be told without them. Forget the battles or chasing the title of Master – and step into this fun, fluffy iteration of the world.”
In other news, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has been delayed again, but only for Epic Game Store users.