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This year’s Pokémon Presents has brought with it a slew of new digital experiences, and while Legends Z might be the one on most people’s minds – the announcement of the Pokémon TCG Pocket game is one that looks like it could fly under the radar.
Labelled a “new Pokémon TCG experience” with “immersive cards,” the new game looks to offer a far less competitive TCG experience than Pokémon TCG Live. You can read more about our comparison of Pokémon TCG Pocket and Live here.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket release date window
As per the announcement stream, the Pokémon TCG Pocket release date window is set for 2024, though a specific date has not been confirmed yet.
Bearing in mind that Pokémon love a summer launch for all its new titles, we can expect a late Summer launch for Pokémon TCG Pocket too. There’s a pattern we can follow here too:
- Pokémon Go release date: July 2016 (I skipped our school’s sport’s day to play this on release)
- Pokémon Masters Ex: August 2019
- Pokémon Unite: September 2021
With the Temporal Forces expansion release date set for next month, alongside the anticipation for the rest of the expanion’s card list, it’s unlikely that we will see the Pokémon TCG Pocket release date before then.
So far, it looks as though you can open packs and battle in-game, though the difference between the existing TCG is that there is much more of an onus placed on collecting cards. As aptly noted by one of our writers: A new way to collect Pokémon cards like the binders weren’t enough.
It’s going to be interesting to see how Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket compares to other TCG titles such as Duel Masters and MTG Arena, especially considering how valuable they have been in maintaining both commercial interest in physical trading cards, while also offering a new angle for players to attack the game with.
We’ve not yet found out whether the game will be entirely free-to-play, though we’re going to be keeping an eye out on further developments there.
Will there be an early access or beta for Pokémon TCG Pocket?
At the moment, it seems incredibly unlikely that we’re going to see a beta or early access period for the latest TCG mobile experience. It’s very seldom that we see mobile games launched like this – with the exceptions of titles like Honkai Star Rail.
