Puyo Puyo eSports will be released in the West under the title Puyo Puyo Champions. Game director Mizuki Hosoyamada confirmed the news in Neo Magazine. The same article also indicates that the game will launch on May 7. The title had already been registeredsince last year, so for many people this announcement merely confirmed the inevitable.
Photo of the Neo Magazine article
As its name indicates, the game encourages eSports play, with a competitive online mode featuring its own rules and the ability to create professional offline tournaments. Standard multiplayer modes are also present, so the game is not limited exclusively to the premise expressed by its Japanese title.
Although Puyo Puyo is a niche franchise in the West, there have been extremely skilled players and numerous tournaments since the beginning of the franchise, and as Tetris 99 recently showed us, puzzle-game competitions can be as thrilling as those in other genres.
According to Hosoyamada, the game “is the most accessible title in the series, so we hope this is what will attract newcomers and get them to play Puyo Puyo Tetris.”
In addition, the game's trailer apparently leaked. The trailer, entirely in English, says that the game is already available, which is not the case. It is therefore plausible to conclude that the trailer was not supposed to have been released yet.
Screenshot from the trailer
The leaked trailer is for the Switch version, so the PlayStation 4 version has not yet been confirmed. According to the leaked scans, the game will also be released for Xbox One and PC through Steam. Apparently, however, the release will also be digital-only, as was Puyo Puyo eSports.
Since the trailer was taken down by the rights holders, its legitimacy was all but confirmed.
[Update 04/23] SEGA officially confirmed that Puyo Puyo Champions will be released in the West on May 7, 2019, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC through Steam for just US$9.99. The game will feature English and Japanese voice acting, along with interfaces in English, French, German, and Spanish. In addition, a physical edition was confirmed for PlayStation 4 and Switch in Japan, but nothing has been said about a physical version for the West so far. Watch the new official trailer below:
