Nintendo apologizes for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s performance issues

After a rocky launch, Nintendo has finally addressed the performance issues surrounding Pokémon Scarlet and Violet in its latest patch.

The details:

• The highly-anticipated Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released in mid-November to mixed reception. Although many fans praised the gameplay due to it adding new features, such as an open-world setting for Pokémon, these comments were quickly overshadowed by the variety of bugs and performance issues present.
• Today, Nintendo released a patch for the games that introduces a small number of changes and “select bug fixes”. It’s unknown what these bug fixes are exactly, but it’s likely that they’re aimed at those issues being reported most frequently.
• Included in the patch notes was a statement from Nintendo which reads: “We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games' performance. Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.” The last part of the statement was echoed in a Tweet linking to the patch notes from the official Nintendo of America Twitter account.

What’s going on with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?

• The games’ first season of ranked battles, based out of the Battle Stadium, is now underway. It’s unclear if any of the patch’s changes relate to this mode, including fixing the RNG calculation that allowed players to guarantee one-hit KOs on opponents.
• Scarlet and Violet’s releases collectively broke the 10 million units sold mark within less than a week of being live, taking just three days to do so and becoming Nintendo’s best ever release from a sales perspective.
• We’re expecting another patch (or multiple) in the near future focused on improving the games’ performance, now that Nintendo has publicly acknowledged their instability.