Pokémon Stars evidence continues to build up

Is Pokémon Stars the newly announced Pokémon game for the Nintendo Switch? If so, what is it, and what is a listing doing on Amazon UK?

Pokémon generally lives on Nintendo’s handheld systems. Its spinoffs, like Pokémon Snap, Pokémon Colosseum, and Pokkén Tournament, get to go onto the home consoles. But since the whole idea of the Nintendo Switch is that it’s something you can take anywhere (something Nintendo loves emphasizing), a regular Pokémon game seems like a natural fit.

Enter the rumors of Pokémon Stars, which have been around for what feels like years at this point. Earlier this year, Game Freak even put out a call for designers to work on an RPG. At that time, we here on Culturess concluded it was probably that game, which we presumed would be something like the Pokémon Crystal to Sun and Moon‘s Gold and Silver.

Then came the Nintendo Spotlight from E3 this year. Pokémon‘s time to shine mostly focused on Pokkén Tournament DX, but another low-key announcement made some waves:

However, they were quick to add that that fans might not see whatever this game is for a while:

That about brings us to today, when Nintendo Wire noticed that Amazon UK had actually made a purchase page for a game called Pokémon Stars on the Nintendo Switch live:

As of this writing, you can still actually pre-order. The fact that it mentions Amazon itself as the seller lends credence to all of the theories that yes, this is exactly what we think it is. There’s also an obvious placeholder date of Jan. 1, 2030 listed as the release date. That’s far more than the “more than a year” that was mentioned during E3.

Next: 5 things we want in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon

Obviously, the focus for the Pokémon franchise in the near future will be Pokkén and the newly announced Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. However, taken together, all of this evidence makes a fairly strong case for Stars.