Pokémon Sword & Shield will be the first games in the Pokémon series to introduce an autosave feature, which is something that fans have wanted for years. The question that fans have been wondering is why it took so long to include it in the first place.
The Pokémon games have always required the player to manually save their game, which means that it's possible to lose a significant amount of progress if the battery runs out or if the game crashes. The early Pokémon games lacked the capacity to autosave, as all saves were done using batteries within the cartridges themselves. The most recent Pokémon games allowed the player to save their game directly to the system, as it was possible to buy digital versions of the Pokémon titles from Pokémon X & Y onwards.
The Risk Of Cheaters Abusing The Feature
The most obvious answer as to why Game Freak hasn't messed with the saving formula is due to cheating. The developers of the Pokémon series seem to be deathly afraid of players abusing the save method in order to cheat the local and online trading systems, which is why it seems unlikely that Pokémon Sword & Shield will allow the players to use the cloud save functionality of the Nintendo Switch. It has been confirmed that Animal Crossing: New Horizons will not be using the cloud save functionality for the same reason.
Save Scumming Could Become More Difficult
The Pokémon series has had many moments that encourage save-scumming, with the most notable being the battles against Legendary Pokémon. There are some Legendary Pokémon that are a nightmare to catch with anything less than the Master Ball and it's easy for the player to accidentally knock out their opponent during this process.
There are also the poor souls who try to save scum in order to get Shiny versions of the starter Pokémon or Legendary Pokémon, which is a process that can take thousands of tries to accomplish. The autosave functionality might make this process more difficult to perform. depending on how often it actually saves the game, but it has been confirmed that the autosave feature in Pokémon Sword & Shield can be switched off if the player wants to go old school and use manual saves.
There's No Longer An Excuse
Pokémon Sword & Shield are the first mainline entries in the Pokémon series to be released on a home console and the pressure is on Game Freak to deliver a triple-A experience for the first time. The previous Pokémon games have been released on handheld systems, which meant that the series was often behind the curve compared to other major video game franchises, as they were limited by their hardware. The Nintendo Switch is capable of some amazing technological feats and companies have been able to get games like Doom: Eternal running on the system, so the developers of Pokémon Sword & Shield no longer have an excuse to be behind the times.
The developers of Pokémon Sword & Shield are able to use the Nintendo Switch to bring the series up to modern standards of convenience and the autosave feature is just one aspect of this. Pokémon Sword & Shield might not include every Pokémon in the series, but they are able to be more impressive on a technical level than the previous entries, which includes doing away with the cumbersome manual save system and allowing the player to enjoy their Pokémon journey without fear of accidentally losing their progress due to an accident or forgetfulness.
Pokémon Sword & Shield will be released for the Nintendo Switch on November 15, 2019.