Pokémon fans got a rare look behind the curtain this week as Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, took the stage at PokémonXP and the Pokémon World Championships 2026, held August 28 to 30 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The events were also streamed online through Broadcast Hub, Twitch, and YouTube for fans who couldn’t make it in person.

During a panel called “Producing Pokémon: A Conversation with Mr. Ishihara,” the longtime executive talked about how the franchise has changed alongside technology over the years, moving from handheld consoles to wireless features and now to the smartphone era. Looking ahead, Ishihara said The Pokémon Company wants to explore closer integration with wearable devices, specifically pointing to smartwatches, smart glasses, and even smart rings as areas of interest.

He noted that older companion gadgets like the Pokéwalker and Pokémon GO Plus used to feel like hidden extras players could pull out to complete small in game tasks, but he believes there’s room for much bigger ideas now. Nothing was confirmed as an official new product, but the comments came shortly after the release of the Fitbit Air Special Edition Pokémon Sleep, a wearable tracker built to work with the Pokémon Sleep app, showing the company is already testing the waters in this space.

Ishihara’s interest in gadgets isn’t new. Besides running The Pokémon Company, he founded Creatures Inc., one of the three companies, alongside Nintendo and Game Freak, that co owns the Pokémon franchise. He has been involved with the series since the original Pokémon Red and Green, and has also had a hand in the anime and the Trading Card Game over the years. He shared that he has always had a personal love for handheld gadgets and toys, which has shaped how he thinks about the franchise’s future. His hope is for Pokémon to keep finding new ways to give players fresh experiences, ideally for another three or four generations to come.

The conversation also turned to the past, specifically the making of the first Pokémon games. Ishihara revealed that trading, now seen as one of the most important parts of the Pokémon experience, almost didn’t make it into Red and Green at all. The feature ran into serious technical trouble because of how the Game Boy’s Link Cable worked. If the connection dropped in the middle of a trade, developers had two options, both flawed. Either the Pokémon being traded would vanish from both games, or it would end up copied on both, creating duplicates.

The team ended up choosing the duplication route. Ishihara explained that losing a player’s Pokémon for good felt like the worse outcome, so they decided it was better to risk occasional duplicates than risk permanent loss. Developers tried to reduce the odds of this happening by adding randomness and timing checks into the trading process, but with millions of people playing the games, some players eventually figured out how to trigger the glitch on purpose. Even so, Ishihara said he has no regrets about the choice. Keeping trading in the game turned out to be one of the most important decisions for the franchise, helping shape how players collect Pokémon and connect with each other to this day.

The panel wrapped up on a lighter note when a fan asked Ishihara what the best part of being CEO of one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world actually is. His answer was simple. He gets to play new games a little earlier than everyone else.