Rewatch the January 9 Pokemon Direct: Sword and Shield DLC announced

Paul Cot

The January 9 Pokemon Direct has finished and it didn’t disappoint. You can watch it again here.

To the delight of trainers around the world, Nintendo announced a somewhat surprising Pokemon Direct on January 7. The news came out of nowhere but fans aren’t complaining as new Pokemon news is always welcomed.

The presentation mainly focused on the announcement of a Pokemon Sword and Shield expansion pass. Two new DLCs were confirmed, with the first to be released in June.

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Start time

The “roughly 20 minute” long presentation is scheduled to start on January 9, 6:30am PST – that’s 9:30am EST for those on the east coast and 2:30pm GMT for fans in the United Kingdom.

Where to watch

You don’t need to go anywhere to watch the already hugely anticipated first Pokemon Direct of 2020. It’s embedded for your convenience below, so watch along and hopefully there will be a lot to talk about afterwards!

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What will be announced?

Update: The 2020 Pokemon wasn’t announced, so we’ll have to wait to see which game is coming next. Maybe Pokemon Day in February will have the answers.

There is plenty going on in the world of Pokemon which might addressed in this presentation. This includes various new games, a DLC for the latest game – Pokemon Sword and Shield – and some details on the upcoming apps Pokemon Home and Pokemon Sleep.

Given we haven’t heard anything about the latter since the summer, the smart money will be on some new details about these apps. Specifically we can expect to get a release date considering Pokemon Home has been touted for an early 2020 release.

A January Pokemon Direct might have come a little too early for an announcement about this year’s new game. However, since when did that stop Pokemon fans from speculating?

It’s looking a return to Pokemon Diamond and Pearl’s Sinnoh region could be on the cards. While nothing has been announced, or even hinted at, this seems to be the front-runner for the 2020 Pokemon game.

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There has also been talk of a Pokemon Let’s Go sequel in the form of Gold and Silver, with the Johto region being the logical next iteration. What this will be called or whether there’s any chance of it coming this year remains to be seen, though.

A more likely announcement is something surrounding a Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC. 35 Pokemon currently not included have already been leaked via a datamine so it seems likely that these are coming sooner rather than later.

Some think the new Gen 8 game is a little thin in terms of content, so an exciting new DLC would make a lot of sense. Perhaps the much rumored return to the Kalos region could be announced, too.

Elsewhere, we have a new Detective Pikachu game which is expected to release at some point in 2020. New details about this movie spin-off are overdue as well.

As you can see there is plenty for the Pokemon Company to discuss – we’ll know what’s coming soon enough.