Champions being free to starts means there basically is no cannibalization. You can play Champions without touching a main series game, because it does have a way to obtain Pokémon within itself via Recruitment, but it’ll almost certainly be easier to just import your own Pokémon via Home, so I think it will still broadly favor interacting with the main series games.
More to the point, though, is the fact that bringing your Pokémon from a main series game over into Champions should be a smooth transition, especially if it continues to be the VGC platform beyond 2026, but playing a hypothetical Gen 10 game with real-time battles and then sending your Pokémon over to Champions for turn-based competitions isn’t smooth at all. You’d basically be forcing people to learn how to use any given Pokémon all over again, and a Pokémon that may perform well in real-time battles may not necessarily perform as well in turn-based battles, so you wouldn’t be to go into Champions with any kind of gameplan that would be rooted in your experience with Gen 10. There’d be no continuity of experience between Champions and the games it’s intended to import from.
It’s one thing to have a bit of disconnect between Z-A’s new Mega Evolutions and the regular competitive scene, because all that’s really missing is their Abilities. We know how Malamar performs in standard Pokémon battling; adding a Mega for it mostly just raises the question of whether that makes Malamar more viable. But introducing 80+ whole new Pokémon and moves and Abilities and then having none of how that all works in the main series be relevant to competitive is a whole different scenario.
On top of that, if the main series games were transitioning to real-time battles instead of turn-based… why would the platform game for official competitions not follow suit with that? Why would they not want the focus of official competitions to be the exciting, dynamic new vision for how Pokémon battling is going to be from then on? The point of Champions isn’t to be a mausoleum for Pokémon gameplay from Gens 1-9, it’s to be a dedicated competitive hub.
I think there’s also just kind of a fundamental limitation on opportunities for animation when it comes to games with a turn-based format. Pokémon-Amie and its successors have already demonstrated this to some extent as that’s always been where the livelier animations came out, and I think Z-A will make this even more sharply apparent with its real-time battles to serve as a contrast, as we’ll be able to actually see our Pokémon walk and run around in battle. The problem with turn-based, in comparison, is that the game has to wait for you to input your next move, so the Pokémon are going to be idling until both you and your opponent make up your minds.
