Literally that's the defining quality of Pokemon that created fans of the series. Of course, the real solution is to acknowledge that Pokemon can "go extinct" after a while. Maybe Pokemon: Apocalypse to reboot the series? I mean, that worked for X-Men, right?
They had the perfect opportunity for a reboot with their Ultra Space and Ultra Beasts business. Make a completely new game set in an alternate dimension in Ultra Space, with a Pokédex comprised of 150-250 Ultra Beasts, with every other Pokémon not being available at all within the games. It's there, they could have done it, but they didn't, and instead they did this half-assed thing where certain Pokémon can be transferred and others can't, for no reason other than "we felt like including these but not these."
If they really think there are too many Pokémon and they wanted to cut back on it. Make a proper reboot. Then they could have used that opportunity to redo the game's balancing, or whatever their excuse was.
PS - Never been a Pokemon fan precisely because it was always rooted around gotta catch 'em all and the progressively expanding Pokemon base/abilities to drive more sales. It's good to see it's finally biting them in the ass. The only thing left is when they start offering Pokemon DLC.
Too late, they already made Mew a $50 paid DLC in Let's Go. And people actually defended this.
Also you got to remember that every Pokemon added is file size. At some point, those Switch carts can't handle all that info. They have to cut the memory cap eventually, and the easiest way to do that? Superfluous pokemon. Cuts down on that many models worth of info and allows them to make more intricate maps, character models, etc.
Fact. Nintendo Switch cartridges can hold up to 32GB of data.
Fact. OR/AS were 1.8GB in size, despite containing the data for 721 Pokémon, and their alternate forms.
Fact. The models made for X/Y have been reused for OR/AS, S/M, US/UM, Let's Go, Pokémon GO, and are now being reused for S/S.
Fact. The rest of the Pokémon data is infinitely small in terms of data size, relative to the amount of space that the models themselves take up.
Do the math, dude. 1.8GB holds the data for 721 Pokémon, using the exact same models that are being used for Sword and Shield. Even if you assumed that the entirety of the game's 1.8GB of data was all Pokémon data, which it isn't, that still only makes 2.5MB per Pokémon, and that's an incredibly generous estimate. You could add 100 new Pokémon and it would only use up 100-150MB of data at best.
Fact. Sun and Moon left almost 800MB of free space on the 4GB of cartridge space that was available to them. Despite this, they were very lacking and a straight-up downgrade in terms of features, in comparison to its predecessors. Why didn't they use all of the space they had to make their games as good as possible? Oh right, I forgot, they needed to leave some free space, so they could add those extra features into Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon a year later (which are otherwise almost unchanged from Sun/Moon, I might add) and make people pay full price again for it. And even in US/UM they left almost 400MB of free space that could have been used to make the games better.
Turns out, "running out of space for good game content" is a myth, perpetuated by tech-illiterate people who have no idea how any of this stuff works. It has nothing to do with "including too many Pokémon", but everything to do with quantity over quality, which has been Game Freak's motto for a while now.
If higher capacity Switch cartridges are too expensive, which is a fair concern, they could simply fit the bare minimum on a smaller sized cartridge, and require a day-1 update to download the rest of the game. Other games do this, and yes, it would upset people, but nothing like the amount of backlash they would get from cutting so much out of the games for no reason.
In the end, it's all about business and profits. Pokémon being
the highest grossing franchise in media, they're at a point where the priority is to cash out and make as much money as they can on it for as little effort as possible, rather than focusing on actually making their games as good as they could be.
YouTube Video
