Is Pokémon Tides and Gales real? Fans remain sceptical as Gen 10 rumours emerge

Rumours are now spreading that Gen 10 – dubbed Pokémon Tides and Gales – is in development for the Nintendo Switch 2.

We'll go through the rumours to let you know whether or not Tides and Gales is real, or if it's just a load of Trubbish.

Pokémon Tides and Gales rumours explained

Pokémon Tides and Gales is reportedly the name of the upcoming tenth generation of mainline Pokémon games, according to a 4chan post from 11th May 2025.

The game will is said to be set in the 'Lados' region. Apparently taking inspiration from the island hopping of Pokémon Sun and Moon, but with a Greek island vibe instead of Hawai'ian, it will feature 16 main islands and 150+ smaller ones.

The three new starters will reportedly be Fire-type goat 'Embaah', Water-type octopus 'Octopop' and Grass-type snail 'Mosshell'. The game will also seemingly feature the legendary Thalorion, which swaps between its flying 'Aeraxis Forme' and water 'Marexis Forme'.

The main gimmick of the games, replacing Terastallization, is allegedly called 'Gigaxis'.

Each main island is said to feature a guardian Pokémon, such as 'Marbleo' of Mimos Island, and pledging loyalty to a guardian will apparently unlock a temporary Gigaxis forme that changes a Pokémon's appearance and type.

After repeated use of the same form, this change will allegedly become permanent.

As well as this, the post shares a few other Pokémon, such as an early-game griffin, sea hare, four-eyed green snake, black beetle and hermit crabs with different shells. They also share that the player's rival is a girl from your village named Sofia.

The post does not include any info about a potential release date for the game, so whether this is an early look or a game that's close to shipping is entirely unclear.

Is the Pokémon Tides and Gales leak real?

While there's every chance that the leak could be real, we think that it's highly likely that Pokémon Tides and Gales is an elaborate hoax, and we think this for a few reasons.

First of all, Pokémon leaks come along all the time, and aside from the odd one from Japanese magazine CoroCoro, they are almost always fake.

The information provided all comes from an English version of the game, including the leaked logos for each of the games, which look at bit more like something out of The Wind Waker than a Pokémon game.

Beyond the fact that the logos are quite poorly formatted with uneven kerning throughout, it would be quite the coincidence for the translated English game to leak before the original Japanese version.

Our next reason is rather subjective, but the names for everything from the Pokémon themselves down to the mechanics and islands seem to be out of keeping with how Game Freak usually approaches things.

'Gigaxis' as a mechanic is especially guilty of this, as it has the same root as 'Gigantamax' from Sword and Shield, and it's unlikely that Game Freak would create two similar names for the same type of mechanic as it risks confusing the two.

Similarly, Thalorion's name bears too much of a similarity to the Unovan legendary Pokémon Virizion, Cobalion and Terrakion, and while perhaps it could be linked to them, it seems unlikely.

Considering the heavy focus on comparing Tides and Gales mechanics to those of Sun and Moon, perhaps the last universally popular Pokémon game, it feels to us as if the poster is trying to appeal to the popularity of those games with a clever fake.

Then again, we may be wrong, in which case we'll happily eat our own words; until it's confirmed, though, we think you can probably keep Pokémon Tides and Gales firmly in the 'not real' column.

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