25 November 2025

Z-A’s ‘Small’ Budget Is Smart Game Development

By newsgame

It’s no secret that Pokemon Legends: Z-A seems not to have had a huge budget during game development, as its asset reuse has been a big subject of conversation surrounding it up to and following its release. In fact, despite being the next installment in a mainline Pokemon series, Pokemon Legends: Z-A‘s apparent budget would almost indicate that it was treated like a spin-off instead.

To that point, a fairly recent leak revealed that Pokemon Legends: Z-A‘s budget was only around $13 million, as opposed to the tens and hundreds of millions AAA developers have been known to spend on their games. Former Nintendo of America employees Krysta Yang and Kit Ellis then seemingly confirmed that number when they discussed the leak on their YouTube channel, saying that Pokemon Legends: Z-A would only need to sell 200,000 copies just to break even, while most AAA games need to sell millions of copies. However, such a small budget isn’t inherently a bad thing, especially for a Pokemon game.

Budget as a Guardrail for Design

Emma in Looker's office - Pokemon Legends Z-A

Setting a tighter budget can force the prioritization of what matters. For instance, Pokemon games have historically never relied wholly on their visuals to drive sales, although the series has gradually improved over time in that area. The series has consistently sold absurd numbers despite making its visuals less of a priority than its gameplay, if that says anything at all. As such, Pokemon Legends: Z-A‘s smaller budget acts as a guardrail for design, constraining the developer to focus on the things that have already proven to sell a Pokemon game.

With a small budget, then, Pokemon Legends: Z-A is not subject to the sales demands that many AAA titles have been known to fall victim to. If the game truly only needed to sell 200,000 copies to break even, the developer could more safely iterate and polish key areas that might even be controversial to die-hard fans of the franchise. The safer route isn’t always the best route to take in the gaming industry, but Pokemon Legends: Z-A‘s sales numbers have already proven that, for it, the safest route still works.

Within its first week, the latest entry in the Pokemon Legends series sold 5.8 million copies, meaning it sold over 2,800% above its estimated break-even point. Not only did Pokemon Legends: Z-A officially beat its predecessor, Arceus, with these numbers, but it also serves as further proof that a small budget isn’t automatically a game killer. More than anything, it shows that Game Freak knows what works, knows what sells, and that is smart game development.

Smart Asset Reuse Means More Gameplay Behind the Scenes

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One of the main points of contention with Pokemon Legends: Z-A has been its reuse of assets, not just from past Pokemon games, but within Z-A itself. The clearest example of that can be seen on the buildings scattered throughout Lumiose City, which share the same silhouettes, window layouts, and even storefront details. After a while, it becomes obvious that many of these structures are built from the same handful of templates, and for some players, that might be and has apparently been a deal-breaker.

That hasn’t stopped some players from praising Pokemon Legends: Z-A, specifically stating their love for the game despite what others might say are bad graphics. For example, Reddit user etanimod stated in a post that “the background visuals have never been the point” of Pokemon games, despite the thread being littered with comments effectively saying the contrary. Many feel companies as big as Game Freak and The Pokemon Company should utilize more resources to make games that look better than Pokemon Legends: Z-A, but visuals are only so important to certain gaming experiences. It’s always going to be the fun that matters. In fact, another post by Reddit user nicoheems shared a similar sentiment, with the idea being that it’s the way Pokemon games make players feel that matters, not the way they look.

In practice, reusing assets or simply putting a game’s graphics lower on the checklist of priorities is one of the smartest ways to stretch the small budget for a Pokemon game like Legends: Z-A. Reusing building models and environmental pieces allows Game Freak to spend less time making Pokemon Legends: Z-A look good and more time on what actually makes the moment-to-moment experience one worth having. Battles, encounters, spawn logic, side activities, difficulty tuning, and performance all stand to benefit when developers aren’t rebuilding the same street corner from scratch just to change a sign or a window shape. Even with that asset reuse, it still feels like Lumiose City, and for most players, that probably matters more than whether every environmental nuance has bespoke geometry.

Even on a player-facing level, a trade-off like that is easy to justify. As the franchise’s “Gotta catch ’em all” slogan suggests, when someone boots up a Pokemon game, they are likely more interested in what they can catch and how their team will grow than in counting how many times a particular apartment block has been reused. If the cost of having more Pokemon to encounter, more routes to explore, and more systems running under the hood is that many of Legends: Z-A‘s buildings look the same, that’s not exactly a bad deal. When players are in the middle of tracking down a rare spawn, chances are they’re not stopping to examine the brickwork.

When Less Equals More in the Pokemon Sandbox

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Then there’s Pokemon‘s genre to consider, which inherently supports the idea that less is more. The open-world monster-catching genre is different from the expectations that come with AAA open-world blockbusters like Grand Theft Auto or Assassin’s Creed. The Pokemon audience, specifically, is more concerned with catching Pokemon, battling with them, and evolving them than stories told through a star-studded cast or visually striking, almost realistic worlds to explore. That kind of scope doesn’t require a $100 million dollar budget, and such a budget would arguably only be encouraged if Pokemon started exploring a different genre.

With a lower budget, Pokemon can have a more sustainable release cadence as well, reducing risk for the publisher in the process, as any given game doesn’t need to sell tens of millions of copies to justify its existence. When a game costs less to make, the studio doesn’t need to spend as many years building new assets and new systems from the ground up. Pokemon‘s shorter development cycle makes it easier to release new entries at a steady pace, which keeps the brand in front of players more often. Pokemon has always benefited most from staying in the spotlight, and a tighter budget helps with that.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A’s Small Budget Is One of Its Greatest Strengths

In the end, Pokemon Legends: Z-A proves that a smaller budget doesn’t automatically get in the way of a game that understands what its players actually care about. The strong sales speak for themselves, but perhaps even more than that, they show that a game doesn’t need a massive investment ahead of time in order to be successful. Pokemon Legends: Z-A works because it stays in its lane and makes the most of it, which is often all that a Pokemon game needs to do.