Nintendo announced Friday morning that Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will be the next games in the series.
This news comes from Nintendo’s special Pokémon-themed Nintendo Direct, which was held Friday due to the franchise’s 20 anniversary last Saturday.
The new Pokémon games will launch worldwide on Nintendo 3DS before Christmas 2016. The games will be available in nine languages, which includes Chinese for the first time.
This news is confirmed after trademark applications for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, with their logos, have been published on a European trademark registry on Thursday.
Sun and Moon will be a new “generation” of Pokémon games, which will all take place in a whole new region. A mythical Pokémon was revealed earlier this month, Magearna, a highly likely Generation VII Pokémon.
In the announcement video, a new bird type Pokémon that resembles a woodpecker was also teased.
It also appears that Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will introduce drivable vehicles to the Pokémon universe. Players may be able to drive and customize their cars instead of the usual bicycle. It seems that humans will not be the only ones riding in vehicles, as it can be seen that three Pokémon are transported in pickup trucks in the trunk bed, which hints that Pokémon Centers could possibly be mobile in game.
Additionally Nintendo announced that the 3DS Virtual Console re-releases of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow will be usable with the Pokémon Bank app, which allows players to store Pokémon in an online storage. Nintendo previously said that Pokémon from Generation I would never be transferred to current games due to how the games calculated Pokémon stats.
The next major Pokémon game to be released is Pokken Tournament, which releases in March for Wii U.
The latest games in the series for 3DS were Pokémon Omega and Alpha Sapphire, which released in November 2014.