Game Freak Announces End of Beast of Reincarnation’s Post-Launch Updates

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Published Oct 16, 2026, 12:24 PM EDT

Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A.V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast.

The Pokémon developer seems to be putting its action RPG on the back burner

Image: Game Freak/Fictions Inc.

Beast of Reincarnation will stop receiving regular updates just over two months after its release. Developer Game Freak, best known as the studio behind Nintendo's Pokémon series, has announced the action RPG's current post-launch update plan is coming to an end. While this won't necessarily mean the end of support, it suggests the studio is ready to step away from Beast of Reincarnation and move on to other projects.

Game Freak made the announcement in a lengthy post on X: "We want to share that our current post-launch update cycle is coming to a close." The game's next patch is currently slated for Oct. 19, with Game Freak saying this will be the final patch in "this ongoing phase of major post-launch updates." The post also says "frequent updates will be coming to an end," and urges players to submit feedback via the game's official support form. The wording of the post is just vague enough as to avoid saying outright that Game Freak is ending support for Beast of Reincarnation, but players shouldn't expect major content or fixes after Oct. 19.

Beast of Reincarnation didn't hit quite like Game Freak may have wanted. This is what we wrote about the game in our review:

Beast of Reincarnation does kick with its breathtaking action, powered by rich RPG systems you’d expect from the studio that once revolutionized the genre, but its identity is buried under unrefined ideas borrowed from some of the decade’s best games. In trying to create something that projects prestige, Game Freak is too quick to repress its emotions at a moment that begs for vulnerability.

Is Game Freak working on the next Pokémon already?

pokemon winds and waves starters from behind — What clues can we discern from looking at the back of Browt?

Game Freak's next major project is, unsurprisingly, Pokémon. After a number of leaks, Nintendo officially revealed Pokémon Winds and Waves earlier this year. As the names suggest, ocean exploration will be a major aspect of these entries, with players surfing the water as a truly explorable biome for the first time.

Nintendo has also shown off the games' new starters: Browt, the Bean Chick Pokémon; Pombon, the Puppy Pokémon; and Gecqua, the Water Gecko Pokémon. Winds and Waves are set to be released in 2027 and will be the first Pokémon games exclusive to Switch 2.