Worldwide Set Releases Theory: Likely Dead!

Skeleton Liar

サーナ~
Member
Bummer, dude. I know you were pretty confident in this theory. I wasn't holding my breath, but I did like the possibility of it happening, and I found the speculation interesting.
 

Silveraith

Aspiring Trainer
Member
God, even now we're still getting over 200 cards in a set. Glad I'm not collecting anything past Gen VII.
 

OVERGRO

Pokemon is lyfe.
Member
RIP theory, it was really nice of you to make this post admitting the theory you had long posited was proven wrong instead of leaving people wondering about it.

On the flipside, this means I'm more likely to keep on collecting both Japanese and English cards on and off haha.
 

DMYSYS

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Why can't they just directly port the Japanese sets to North America? Smaller sets are easier to collect.

I am sick of these giant megasets that lose any coherent theme and are just overloaded with SRs. The last straw for me was when SM6b was split across 2 (maybe even 3?) different sets and what could've been XY Evolutions 2.0 was completely missed.

Incidentally, CP6 was the last set I bought a booster box of, and I've bought maybe 4 packs as impulse buys through the entire SM block (surprise! I got no SRs from any of the packs – hell, not even a Holo. Probably weighed beforehand by someone else, and since the pull rates are so lousy, it's too easy to get screwed over.)

Most of my posts on this site are just complaining about the cynical turn the TCG has taken, but failing to go for the opportunity for a world-wide synced release schedule shows the needless cashgrab will never end. The gross profit made by selling 10 papercards for $5+ USD is already a huge markup for them, all the more considering how many packs the average consumer buys.. there is no need for the direction they've gone with the set sizes. It genuinely sucks, and their attempts at occasional placation with smaller sets like Generations and Dragon Majesty gets immediately undone by their availability being limited to those speciality packs with pins that end up sitting around collecting dust.


Again, a synchronized release schedule had me quite hopeful that we might eventually see things give way to smaller set sizes. A massive, massive thumbs down from me.
 

Frost

Ice/Fairy Stan Account
Member
Different business models between countries I think. American retailers having to add product of a new miniset every single month like Japan does would probably bomb even harder than what we have now. Most big retailers like Walmart and Target only dedicate a set amount of space for Pokemon cards and following Japan's model would flood those sections even faster. Plus an even bigger deluge of product means if a set doesn't sell it clogs things up and dissuades sellers from buying new stuff.
 

MilesEX

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I'm sad it's not going to happen, they had a prime opportunity and it even seemed like it was happening due to nothing much releasing in the last Q in Japan.

The way they release cards is so so messy.
 

snoopy369

Aspiring Trainer
Advanced Member
Member
Different business models between countries I think. American retailers having to add product of a new miniset every single month like Japan does would probably bomb even harder than what we have now. Most big retailers like Walmart and Target only dedicate a set amount of space for Pokemon cards and following Japan's model would flood those sections even faster. Plus an even bigger deluge of product means if a set doesn't sell it clogs things up and dissuades sellers from buying new stuff.

Yes, this exactly. It also would make prerelease tournaments sort of silly - you'd either have a million prereleases (one a month?) which nobody would want to do, or you'd have none, which would be too bad because those are fun. Admittedly I'd love to see those change in some ways as I think they're getting less fun with the larger sets, but I don't want 10 of them per year either. I'm not running that many tournaments alongside our challenges and cups, it'd wear me out.

The current schedule roughly matches Magic's release schedule, which I'm guessing is also beneficial. (Magic has slightly more, but it matches their schedule for "regular" sets.)
 

signofzeta

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Pokemon could do two sub sets instead of one per year, and instead of having them exclusive to box sets, they could release them like regular sets, but have each pack have 6 cards that are all holo, or something like that. These booster sets aren't treated like regular sets, and thus have no pre-releases, and theme decks.

Both Magic and Yugioh have these side booster sets.

Yugioh has 9 booster sets, 4 of which are the usual regular 9 card booster sets. The other ones are either the 5 card all foil packs that costs the same as a regular booster, or those 5 card non-foil sets that are cheaper than regular boosters.

Magic had the masters series, and still sometimes release a booster set that contains older reprints. The packs costs more than the regular booster sets. They also release booster sets that are not legal for standard, such as Conspiracy and Battlebond.

All I'm saying is, both Magic and Yugioh have side booster sets, and Pokemon only has 1, which is only exclusive in box sets, and not released as a booster box. It is time for Pokemon Company to make smaller main sets, and put those extra cards into a second side set, and release both side sets as a booster packs in a booster box, not in a box set.
 
Top