Nintendo reveals two $30 Expansion Passes for Pokemon Sword and Shield

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Gaming news finally picked up pace this decade as Nintendo hosted its first Direct of the year. The 20-minute Pokemon Direct was exclusively about new Pokemon content, including a new game reveal and expanded content for the Switch’s current Pokemon games.

Nintendo hasn’t helped Pokemon become the highest grossing media franchise on the planet without knowing how to milk their fans for every penny. In a deliciously evil twist, Pokemon Sword & Shield are both getting Expansion Passes. Yes, plural. If you own copies of both Pokemon Sword & Shield you’ll need to buy two versions of the Expansion Pass if you want to access to the new areas in each game. There’s a few small differences between the passes, including unique Pokemon, but they’re largely the exact same thing.

The Pokemon Sw&Sh Expansion Passes include access to two major add-ons – The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra. Each will have new story content to work through, a new area to explore, and of course 200 ‘legacy’ Pokemon, including some new Legendary Pokemon. The new areas will be Wild Areas with giant, seamless maps.

It’ll set you back $29.99 each for the Pokemon Sword Expansion Pass and the Pokemon Shield Expansion, bringing the grand total for both games and both sets of post-launch content to the grand old total of $180. Lovely stuff.

Part 1: Isle of Armor will be out in June while Part 2: The Crown Tundra will follow later in the year.

Nintendo also announced a remake of the remarkably average Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team games. They scooped a Metacritic score of 67% in 2006 so we dread to think how Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX will review in 2020. Anyway, it’s coming to Nintendo Switch on March 6th, 2020, and a demo is going up on the eShop later today.