Scarlet/Violet disproves this because of the extra effort they actually did put in to animations and models that people conveniently like to forget. A lot of old Pokemon got new models, and a lot of new animations were added to old Pokemon. Battle, swim, attack, etc.
"Stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series" like what? The new gimmicks? That worked for their audience? Dmax did break up the pacing of VGC which is part of why so many new players got into it in that gen. Tera is popular even if divisive.
"The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9." Okay, add the new texturing, new animations, make it look nice. Something people don't talk about is that for a while, SWSH despite what people said basically did not have Pokemon mods that worked well.
BDSP works well because they did straight up rip the models with no new texturing. But even SWSH, if you just put in an old model at a higher resolution, it will look out of place because every Pokemon in SWSH has different texturing. This is also true of LGPE. Programming a Pokemon gameplay wise is fairly fucking simple, that's always been the case- it's literally a turn based RPG. You are basically putting in spread sheets. That doesn't mean it gets done in the pipeline and ships launched.
"animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit," They literally are not, which is why there is currently a process of replacing the old animations for Pokemon with the SV ones on Showdown. Because they are pretty much just better, more expressive.
Game Freak fundamentally is a company full of developers who give a shit about the games, and is mostly made up of younger fans (frankly, because it's easier to underpay people if it's their dream job). The higher-ups are money hungry for sure, but so is fucking Nintendo.
Do you know how fucked Nintendo would be a lot of the time? I guarantee you Nintendo is a big part of why Pokemon releases so quickly, because Pokemon is a system seller that they can guarantee basically every year, every holiday. Ship their consoles, and oh yeah they make major profits off of it too. Literally the same amount as Game Freak.
Here is the concept art for Scarlet/Violet's overworld:
Does this read to you as an entirely cynical attempt to just crash out games? Dexit is not entirely justified in every game, I agree. Particularly, BDSP did literally nothing to the models, and I'm pretty sure that was definitely just "We have to stay in line with the new Dexit norms". But even SWSH touched up the models, had to scale for Dynamax, and they've also become entirely ambitious.
The newer dev team has been pining for an open world since well, most of them have been hired; Sword and Shield. If everything about these Switch games was designed just cynically, they'd stick to extremely safe sequels. They'd make an artstyle that works with the basic upscaled 3DS models with no change, so they didn't have to change texturing or shadows on the SWSH models. They'd never implement an open area and new camera, which easily made the most technical errors and housed almost no essential gameplay time.
Scarlet and Violet would have split areas with more loading screens, cut up the game, or just make it flat out linear. Sun and Moon gameplay in 720p would still basically sell as well, and the new artstyle would be unneeded. They made hundreds of new animations, unnecessary, mostly unthanked by players; clearly a sign of the games being designed from the ground up to require less resources or time, even as resources increase.
Legends Arceus would not have been made, they would have been put to work on BDSP. Speaking of, Let's Go was made as pretty much Junichi Masuda's swan song game, and mostly by veteran staff to commemorate their accomplishments. It started dev around the 20th anniversary, the devs wanted to make it. The GO stuff is because that was the majority of what Masuda has been doing for a while.
There is absolutely 1000% a profit element, and that is simply time. But also, Dexit has extremely reasonable points and frankly people underestimate the work into making a 1000 creatures compatible and looking good in a new game. The new Pokemon models and animations are the best looking part of SV, and frankly, I think SWSH battles looked pretty good. Not mindblowing because it's a turn based RPG, could have used better UI work like Legends, which takes notes from Persona 5. But the models, texturing, lighting gave a much better anime look to the battles in that game than Gen 6 or 7 IMO.
So basically, you are somewhat right. A little. Dexit is at least somewhat because profits, but also if you analyze the Switch games by "oh well they did this to cut down on work needed", it doesn't really make fucking sense.
Increase the time for the games please, but frankly, I don't need the National Dex. Scarlet and Violet is an ambitious game by Game Freak with no polishing period, and I want them to keep down that path of ambition.
I truly do not understand the narrative that Game Freak has played it super safe and just designs the games to be easier to develop. My x in Christ,, in two generations of Pokemon we went from semi open world to entirely open world. Six years out of over 30 to create the one major genre shift, and to one that is more costly, expensive, and time consuming to make.
