The Next Global Event For Pokemon Sun And Moon Has Been Announced

Pokemon Sun & Moon
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo and the Pokemon Company have another new event set to get underway for Pokemon Sun and Moon. The event will be the second major event for the Nintendo 3DS game and it won't be as taxing as the first event.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Gamespot is reporting that the new global event for Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon will get underway starting December 27th. The event will last up until January 9, 2017 two weeks from now. Nintendo 3DS owners who have one of the new Pokemon titles will be able to partake in the event that sees gamers attempting to defeat or capture 1 million Pokemon before January 9th.

However, there's a catch: you can only capture or defeat the Pokemon and have that number counted towards the total event figures by using the Island Scan feature. The Island Scan feature is only made available after earning 100 points from scanning QR codes found within the game.

The Island Scan feature is also said to be used to help players find Pokemon outside of the Alola region within Pokemon Sun and Moon. Scanning and battling these Pokemon will count toward the global score, at which point if enough gamers can capture a million of these pocket creatures, the event will be completed successfully. They don't mention in the article exactly what it is you earn if everyone manages to complete the event, but hopefully it's something special... real special. Otherwise it might make people a lot less inclined to participate in future events.

In fact, in the Gamespot article, they bring out how in the previous event for Pokemon Sun and Moon the whole thing fell flat on its face when The Pokemon Company and Nintendo wanted gamers to capture 100 million Pokemon within the span of just a few weeks between November 29th and December 13th. Despite all the millions of copies they sold of the Nintendo 3DS title, there just wasn't enough gamers capturing enough Pokemon to satisfy the event requirements. In fact, they report that only 16.5 million Pokemon were captured out of the required 100 million. They were way, way off the mark.

Lowering the requirement to just a million should make this new event far more palatable for gamers to hop into and potentially complete the event in a timely manner this time around.

I hate to say it but if they really wanted to do the capture 100 million Pokemon event, they should have worked with Niantic Labs to carry it out in Pokemon Go. There's just a much higher volume of players engaged with the game on a daily basis to make it a more feasible event to carry out.

I don't think the standard Pokemon games are quite there in terms of daily engagement to satisfy the more large-scale events that Nintendo has for the game, but creating crossover events between the mobile game and the Nintendo 3DS handheld might be something they should consider investigating.

Anyway, if you want to take on the latest event, be sure to prep your version of Pokemon Sun or Moon for the second global event, which will take place between December 27th and January 9th.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.