I just hate seeing all the horrible misinformation going around that is doing nothing but making a bad issue worse for no good reason. Here's what we know, a lot of which you may have heard before, but this is ALL important...
a) From official sources (treehouse, famitsu, usgamer, etc.)--I'm getting these directly from the Japanese verbal and written interviews except for usgamer's, which is only in English, just so we can avoid any translation errors or simplifications from online sources. I'm fluent in Japanese:
1) They are reusing base models from gen 6/7. [I can't find the interview, but this was said several years ago, during or after the development of XY]
2) Masuda-san stated "I wanted to tell fans in advance", meaning it was early information. [treehouse 2019]
3) No Megas (or Z moves). [famitsu]
4) Due to the higher power of the Switch, they made each individual Pokemon more expressive. [treehouse 2019]
5) There are over 800 species as of SM. There are over 1000 Pokemon (including alternate forms, gender differences, etc.) as of SwSh. [treehouse 2019 & famitsu]
6) They wanted to preserve the quality of each individual Pokemon by spending time focusing things such as battle balance within the limited time they had. [treehouse 2019]
7) The new expressiveness and balancing proved harder than they originally believes it would and has taken a lot of time. [famitsu]
8) Ohmori-san also indicates they remade models from scratch (unclear if he meant all or some). [famitsu]
9) Ohmori-san claims: "I believe you'll understand when you play Pokemon Sword and Shield, but (even with the restrictions on transferring Pokemon) with things such as the Wild Area and story, there is a great volume of content to play around with. [famitsu]
10) There are no current plans to update the games to add more Pokemon, but the Pokemon you bring to Pokemon Home can be used in features within Home. Additionally, they intend to bring the other Pokemon not in Galar to other games as well. [famitsu]
11) Dynamax can be used with any Pokemon in the game (meaning all Pokemon in the game must be compatible with it). [usgamer]
12) There is post-game content. [usgamer]
13) Higher fidelity and higher-quality animations. [usgamer]
b) Additionally, there are a few complications that we, as fans, need to be aware of as we move forward the discussion:
1) Pokemon is on a multi-media schedule, meaning that delays are very unlikely since the games are meant to coincide with the release of the anime and merchandise. You may personally think this is still okay, but as a company, GameFreak has a duty to fulfill its part of any contracts, deals, and general trust of other big companies involved in the making of other Pokemon material that are relying on the games to advertise their products.
2) Pokemon is, as I just mentioned, a franchise. A BIG franchise. Overall, it brings in about $90 billion USD. The games themselves, however are second to the merchandise and anime, which bring in $61.1 billion USD vs. the games' $17.138 billion USD. It's not that the games themselves aren't important or big money makers, but that they're secondary to investors and sponsors. Thus, the games releasing consistently and regularly is paramount to keeping this up.
3) GameFreak is a small company. Overall, it had 143 employees as of 2018, and these employees are split between different teams making different games. Last we knew, they were working on Let's Go, Sword/Shield, and a few other in-house original games simultaneously. A recent group photo of the assumed Sword/Shield team on GameFreak's twitter showed about 40 people. Not all of them are developers. They also outsource some work to Creatures, inc., though we don't know exactly how much or to how many employees (Creatures, inc. had 110 total employees as of July 2017). Breath of the Wild, in comparison, had over 300 developers during its development process alone.
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TO BE CLEAR, I'm of the mind that if there is a will, there is a way. I believe it is crucial that we, as fans, be vocal about things that matter to us. Even if there were twice as many Pokemon as there are today, with twice as many complications, if people still want to bring their Pokemon with them, they should say so and make it a big deal. Developers shouldn't have to crunch, but there are a ton of ways to make these things possible. Gamefreak's small team might have to grow significantly. They may have to extend the overall time given to each generation or outsource to other companies to make more spin-offs or help with the main games. None of these are easy decisions, but for the sake of the biggest franchise in the world, it makes sense to consider them. So I am not defending the overall decision to restrict Pokemon from SwSh. That said, we need to avoid making personal assumptions about the development team, GameFreak, Nintendo, OLM (the anime studio), and so on. They're not "lazy". They DO care about making Pokemon the best they can. Maybe they do suck at development in many areas (even before this controversy, a game designer from gameXplain did a video critiquing the early design of SwSh from the first two trailers), but they also come from a team used to making 2D games and this is one of their first attempts at integrating a 3D world on a powerful console. This doesn't add up as an excuse to deliver an unsatisfactory product, but it is still the reality.
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Now, as for my personal opinion, I only ever use the transfer feature to bring legendaries and mythicals to the newer games. As long as I am not at risk of losing my Pokemon in Home if I forget to renew a subscription, I don't mind having limited Pokemon (chances are, I'll still be able to complete the national dex in Home). I'm far more interested in the world of Pokemon as a concept and exploring the new region and meeting new Pokemon. I'm not really focused on the visual quality of the games as long as they're generally pretty and create the proper atmosphere. There's still no other franchise or game series out there that gives me the kind of experience Pokemon games do. That's my reality, so I'll keep buying the games as long as they provide this experience. I cannot and will not tell anyone else what to do with their money or time. I only encourage people to think about why they play Pokemon. If the national dex really is important to you, then you're completely justified in putting the series aside until something is done about it. If it's not as important to you, then don't let other people pressure you into a boycott.
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