• Another Pokémon Presents stream was held for Pokémon Day 2023.
• The Presents covered many existing Pokémon products such as Scarlet and Violet, Café ReMix, Unite and more. Pokémon Sleep was also re-revealed after a long absence.
• The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live was the biggest missing element from the event.

Another Pokémon Presents livestream event has arrived, this time to celebrate Pokémon Day 2023. While the reception to the Presents’ contents has been mixed overall, the biggest standout to us was the exclusion of Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Live.

Live is a standalone game for playing the Pokémon TCG – which seems to be more popular than ever – that has been mired in problems ever since its beta was first released more than a year ago. Its initial limited release in Canada was met mostly with criticism after it was revealed that trading would not be possible in a digital game about trading cards.

As more Canadians, and those with VPNs, played the game, it was discovered that the lack of trading was a tiny problem compared to the immense technical problems Live suffers from. Between barely working mechanics, game-breaking bugs, visuals that caused headaches, a lack of features and more, most of the community could barely believe that this is a product created by the biggest media company in the world.

Worse still is the mobile app version which is infamous for causing devices to quickly become hot to the touch all while draining battery life at an alarming rate. On tablets the game even lacks a landscape mode, forcing users to exclusively play in portrait.

Live is worth discussing once again now as it will replace the previous TCG client, Pokémon trading Card Game Online (PTCGO). Official support for PTCGO ends tomorrow, 1st March, so the timing of Presents had many hoping that Pokémon would mention Live in some capacity and, hopefully, announce improvements.

Unfortunately that’s not the case and 1st March will roll around with many TCG players simply forced to migrate to a broken piece of software with no recourse.

For more on the dire state of Live we recommend the video below from user TrustYourPilot who has been playing Live since day one. We recently gave Live a fair try to see if all the negative discussion around it was warranted and we can report that it is as bad as the community was reporting. Even basic functionality like scanning in QR codes (a way to unlock more cards in the game) barely works. If a basic feature like that isn’t functional you can imagine what the rest of the game is like.

What makes the lack of Live in the Presents show event more apparent is the fact that the TCG itself is mentioned several times. The 2023 Pokémon World Championships, which features the TCG, had its date announced for 17th to 18th August, and Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic got its own spotlight in the video.

As for the rest of the presentation, Pokémon Presents for Pokémon Day 2023 can be watched here clocking in at just under 26 minutes.

For those who don’t want to watch through the whole event, separate trailers for each announcement have thankfully been officially uploaded so you can skip to what you want:

• Pokémon Concierge | Official Trailer [Click here]
• Introduction Video | Pokémon GO Plus + [Click here]
• The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero | Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet [Click here]
• Introduction Video | Pokémon Sleep [Click here]
• Take on Walking Wake and Iron Leaves! | Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet [Click here]
• Rest your very best! | Pokémon Sleep [Click here]

An official blog post for the presentation is also available here. Even if you watched the presentation all the way through, we recommend checking out the blog post as it contains extra information and links, as well as some images of the art used in the livestream.