They're calling them both and saying otherwise is being dishonest at best.
Know what, I'll give you that, they are also called lazy. Though it's not hard to see why. They like taking so many shortcuts the games at times feel like budget titles (though they still sell them at full price).
They cut half of the dex with the excuse that they're working on better animations... and in-battle animations haven't improved for at least the older Pokemon (yes, newer Pokemon have better in-battle animations and Pokemon Camp has a ton more animations to make the Pokemon entertaining to watch... though since we're spending a lot of time battling in-game animations should be a higher priority (at the very least give some Pokemon better idle animations than just standing there)).
Even though we've gone to 3d environments and models character animations are still stilted during cutscenes (unless they do a jump cut, when a character wants to walk/run away they first gotta turn around in place to the direction they're going to go, pause, and then enter their walking/running animation).
But animations aren't everything, how about the graphics such as for the Wild Area and now the Hisui region in Legends: Arceus looking like they're from a PS2 game? They couldn't get any better textures?
Then we come to their shortcomings with customization? Seriously, why are they still doing the 8 portraits thing? Why not let us choose skin color, hair color, and eye color as their own separate options? Why do we have to buy the same clothing in different colors, why not just have us buy the clothing and then let us choose what color palettes we want it to be when we put it on?
Why do all the NPCs still shar models when you have a character creator built in the game so can modify that to give trainers more unique appearances (at least different skin, hair, and eye color).
Heck, that above one also applied to Little Town Hero! You'd think that for a passion project with a small scale they would have most NPCs looking unique, but NOPE! A moment in that game which stood out to me was when you visited the mine and, besides the character you were meeting there, all the other miners shared the exact same miner model!
And about the little toen hero thing, theyve already been doing just that; they even reported on it years ago and at the time people claimed it was a sign gf was burning out their workers or something, yet at the same time people also ssid that gf should only work on pokemon since their other smaller games arent as popular. Trust and believe i take many mental notes on this forum and beyond, and it seems downright hypocritical at times.
Well from what I recall the issue with Little Town Hero is that development was happening right alongside Sword & Shield and it sounded like many of the veteran staff has jumped off SwSh to work on that game (which turned out to be true). At the time it always felt like Little Town Hero was an attempt by GF to try and step away from Pokemon, thus why they heavily pushed it. Unfortunately they began doing the same shortcuts in LTH that they did in Pokemon (with no reason because I doubt The Pokemon Company and Nintendo was forcing them to finish that asap, they could have taken as long as they wanted), and with Pokemon also doing the shortcuts it made it feel like they did spread themselves short by working on two big projects at the same time. And know what, maybe they did. Maybe when it comes to big projects like Pokemon or a passion project like Little Town Hero they need a majority of the staff on hand, they should have waited until SwSh was done to then put LTH into full production (obviously have a small team working on pre-production and building the groundwork until then).
Working smarter is synonymous with doing less work for the same or better results, meaning Gamefreak is killing it in that department given the success of SwSh.
It also means using better management skills and uses of resources in order to do more with their time such as adding in more content or polishing things. The only way GF are killing it is that they're taken the idea of working smarter to the back of the shed.
It's time you accept that the minor grievances you have are so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Unless the games begin selling poorly, there is no reason for Gamefreak or anyone developing a core game to cater to the minority. You are old enough to have witnessed and understood this with ORAS. It is embarrassing that the same talking points are still happening today.
... No.
As long as GF expects people to buy their games, as a potential customer for said games, I have the right to complain what I see are shortcomings with it. True, while the games are selling good there's no reason to make it better... but with that logic there's also no reason not to make it better! What does GF lose from actually improving all the aspects I mentioned above? Nothing, no more than they are getting by cutting all the corners they do. Well, maybe they'll have to push the game back a year... which I see no problem as that just means more development time. "But they lose out on the money from the games". HA HA HA! You think the Pokemon franchise makes the majority of its money from selling the games? Hardly, would be surprised if the revenue the franchise brings in is even a quarter from the games. No, the merch handles most of the money making, and no, they don't need a new game to sell more merch. Their might be a small boost, but if you look at the themes the Pokemon Stores has (especially on the Japanese store) you'll know they don't need a game to come up with a sells pitch. Now yes, eventually they'll need a new Pokemon game to base new products around, especially new gens and new Pokemon, but they can take a few years between games (you know, like they used to do) and not only would they not lose money but the extra time could be used for them to not only put all they want into the game but also give it better animations where it counts and polish up the graphics and such. Because they have no reason not to.
