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Pokken Tournament Arcade Future Uncertain in the United States

by Alex Culafi - August 27, 2015, 8:39 am EDT
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Whether it comes out or not, The Pokemon Company may not be involved.

Pokkén Tournament might not necessarily be coming to North America in arcades, as we gathered during an interview with The Pokémon Company International’s Director of Consumer Marketing J.C. Smith, at the 2015 Pokémon World Championships in Boston last weekend.

While discussing the recently-announced Pokkén Tournament Wii U version, we shifted focus to the arcade version.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): So the whole Dave & Buster's thing…

J.C. Smith (JS): Mhm.

NWR: How that’s moving towards arcades presumably next year. We’ll see how that goes. Was that organized by The Pokémon Company International also?

JS: It was not actually. In fact, I haven’t been involved in that, but I’ve been told that the arcade machine is not coming to the U.S., so I don’t know exactly what the plan is. But that was a long while ago, so who knows what may have changed. You know, you can’t stop someone from buying an arcade system so who knows what’s down the road.

NWR: So last you heard, there were no plans.

JS: Yeah, I haven’t been working closely on the arcade side at all because, really, I never worked on the arcade side but we’ll see. I think that will be handled by Bandai Namco. But I’d have to follow-up with you on that.

It’s worth noting that when Senior Vice President of Entertainment and Game Strategy at Dave & Buster’s Kevin Bachus originally said Pokkén was going to be tested in their arcades, he specifically mentioned Bandai Namco in the partnership and not Nintendo or The Pokémon Company. However, it is also interesting that if this deal is exactly like Bachus stated, this would also mean that the deal happened with practically no involvement from The Pokémon Company International, and maybe without Nintendo.

Look out for our full interview with J.C. Smith on Monday (Sorry about the wait! Some things came up and plans changed. It will be up Monday though!).

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