Follow
Link copied to clipboard
Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A.V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area.
The digital trading card game will have bigger gaps between set releases
Sign in to your Polygon.com account
If you’ve played the mobile game Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, you probably have at least two major complaints: the UI is too slow, and the current card set release cadence is overwhelming. It seems that DeNa and The Pokémon Company are working on fixing at least one of these issues.
The Pokémon TCG Pocket Operations Team outlined additions and improvements coming to the game for its second anniversary. The biggest change is that new releases will come every six weeks instead of monthly.
While getting less content could be seen as a bad thing, TCG Pocket's rapid release schedule has overwhelmed many players. Whether you’re aiming to collect all the cards or trying to stay on top of the competitive meta, keeping up with the current release cycle requires near-religious devotion. The change to the game’s release calendar will start with the upcoming C series of card releases.
What other changes were announced?
The shift to a six-week card release cycle is the biggest change coming to Pokémon TCG Pocket, but the Operations Team promises many other additions. Alongside the set-release transition, DeNa will expand the missions and events that coincide with pack releases. Immersive cards, which depict animated scenes, will be obtainable by completing collections and missions. There will also be missions where players can unlock one-star promo cards with unique illustrations. The last major card-collecting change is the addition of “Special Packs,” which are opened with stamina that recovers weekly. The initial special pack, First Partners, will feature the starters from each of the nine regions in previous Pokémon games.
As for the deck-building experience, TCG Pocket is adding a Community Decks feature that lets you easily browse other players’ decks in-game and copy them. The developers are also attempting to improve the utility of rental decks and starter decks, giving them unlimited uses and making them available in versus play. Perhaps the most interesting addition to deck-building is Limited Battles, a new event type with a restricted card pool. These competitions will award players with accessories.
The final area that DeNa will improve in the near future is trading and sharing. The team promised to add a feature that makes it easier to check which cards a potential trading partner is missing.
DeNa is likely hoping this long list of changes will curb TCG Pocket’s ongoing player decline. According to a financial report, the game averaged around 23 million monthly active users between April and June 2026, a 41% drop from the same period last year. Other recent changes include a set that guaranteed rare cards and the addition of dual-typing. Hopefully, the next thing on the company’s list is improving the app’s overall responsiveness and UI, which can make completing daily missions feel like a chore.