Removed Pokémon reveal video sends fans down the rabbit hole of speculation

Nintendo did some housekeeping on its American and Japanese YouTube channels this week, and an old Pokémon-themed Nintendo Direct was taken out with the trash. Confused by the sudden deletion of the archived stream, fans are theorizing that it’s a sign of an imminent Pokémon Stars announcement.

The particular video Nintendo took down was last February’s reveal of Pokémon Sun and Moon, which came at the end of a short presentation for the series’ anniversary. Joe Merrick of fan site Serebii.net pointed out that the video was gone on NeoGAF, offering his own hypothesis as to why.

“[Nintendo still has] the X & Y one up,” he wrote of a previous pair of Pokémon games announced in a Nintendo Direct. “We never had an enhanced version of X & Y that could muddle the message. Typically they remove videos when things like that could happen.”

The hope is that Nintendo is gearing up to reveal Pokémon Stars, the rumored Nintendo Switch re-release of Pokémon Sun and Moon. A Eurogamer report from November said that Pokémon Stars is set for a mid-2017 release, but there’s been little proof that that’s the case.

Even with little to go off but a video that’s spontaneously disappeared, many fans predict that a new Nintendo Direct is coming soon to take this one’s place. This speculation may be undercut by the fact that the original X & Y reveal is also gone from YouTube, although the expanded Pokémon-focused Nintendo Direct that followed remains online.

Still, Nintendo does tend to keep an immaculate archive of Nintendo Direct presentations, and the Sun and Moon reveal served a greater purpose of celebrating the franchise as a whole. We kept our own archive of the Sun and Moon reveal, below.

The Sun and Moon video’s removal — combined with widespread forum chatter about a possible new Nintendo Direct installment airing sometime soon — may be all the proof that the most obsessive of Pokémon fans need. Reddit, NeoGAF and Twitter users are running rampant with pleas for a Pokémon Stars reveal, especially in the lead-up to E3 2017.

A mainline Pokémon game has never been revealed at E3, meaning that now seems like a good time for Nintendo to announce Pokémon Stars, should it exist. But as another tweet points out, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company tend to follow their own unique timetable when it comes to Pokémon reveals.

We’re in a down period before E3, so this kind of wild speculation seems like a way to pass the time. We’ve reached out to Nintendo and The Pokémon Company about the video’s removal, but we’re not getting our hopes up yet for any news about the rumored Pokémon Stars — or otherwise — just yet.