There Was A Reason Pokemon Gray Was Never Made

Why did Game Freak go in a different direction after Black and White? Why didn’t they make Pokemon Gray?

While gaming is far from predictable in some ways, there are certain things you’d expect. Good games get sequels, good consoles sell out, and there’s always going to be debates about which platform is better. For the Pokemon series, for four generations there was a trend of two main releases on handheld, then a third version would come out. In example, Blue, Red, then Yellow. So, when Pokemon Black & White came out, fans expected Pokemon Gray to be released next. But, that didn’t happen.

Instead, for the first time ever, there was Pokemon Black & White 2. An “extension” of the main story that actually took place years after the first two games. While this was received well to an extent, many still wondered why Pokemon Gray didn’t happen. Well, in the upcoming issue of Game Informer, the team sat down with Game Freak Co-Founder Junichi Masuda, who revealed this:

“A lot of people were expecting Pokemon Gray at the time, but the concept of Black and White was kind of these opposing forces – a yin-yang kind of thing. If we went with Gray, it would have moved away from that concept so we decided to keep the titles there.”

This is an interesting reveal not just because it reveals why Pokemon Gray wasn’t made, but, a similar thing is happening with Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Many people were expecting Pokemon Stars to be announced instead, but we got these sequels. Could there be a similar story reason behind these games too?