I've been thinking about what I'm about say for a while, but I didn't feel like posting it due to not really wanting to dredge up this thread and give it more life. Seeing as that's already been done for me, I might as well speak my mind, and it isn't exactly a pretty speech.
Because maybe it's the general bitterness and cynicism that's been circulating around the fandom for months now that's finally gotten to me, but I'm seriously thinking that the whole concept of Pokemon transferring was a mistake to begin with. Remember: At one point, Gold and Silver were gonna be the last Pokemon games. Including transfer features was necessary for unobtainable Kanto Pokemon, easier with just 251 Pokemon existing in total at that point, and a cool novelty for what was supposed to be the series' conclusion at a time where it was uncertain if Pokemon had long-term franchise potential or if it was just another fad on its way out. Of course, the "fad" would go on to be a multi-billion dollar juggernaut that would endure for decades, and with this new lease on life came the mutation of transferring from a one-time bonus for RBY veterans to an untamable, ever-growing behemoth.
I would say something about how this was inevitable or that we should've seen it coming as soon as they started putting an additional price tag on the feature with Pokemon Bank, but I can't say that with a straight face, not with the memory of my first response to the news of Dexit on that faithful day of June 11th that I got during a Discord convo, not with that response being something to the effect of "Why would anyone think that? It's obviously a mistranslation." before a news article was shown to me as proof. After that and so much more grief, controversy and anger from the fanbase, I actually do think Game Freak made a stupid decision. The stupid decision to keep up this absurd expectation, the decision to saddle themselves with this unneeded burden. No other game series on the face of the planet has ever attempted something like this, and nobody ever will because to the rational developer, it's far better to work with a self-contained pool of characters and creatures, and trying to bring back all your old creations outside of major occasions like anniversaries is a waste of resources all for negligible returns on their investment.
Gen 3 was Game Freak's last chance to perform the Dexit relatively painlessly. I can see how they could've justified it now: "We feel really bad for the forced loss of Pokemon due to hardware differences between the GBA and GBC, so we're gonna abandon transferring so should a future hardware incompatibility like that happen again, we don't have to put anymore kids or veterans through that pain ever again." But no, they didn't do that, and now here they are 17 years later, finally forcing themselves to peel off that band-aid. Because every new generation with the full dex is another generation of players they could piss off, and the confidence they have shattered after propping up the expectation of that full dex is not worth investing time into cushioning with a detailed direct or video series about how difficult game development is. People are gonna be enraged no matter what you do, so get it over with as fast as possible via a simple statement in a Nintendo Treehouse. Quick and painless is no longer possible, so might as well knock out the "quick" part.
And after all of that and the news that these games are selling gangbusters anyway, I've been thinking. What if transferring was never a thing or was abandoned early on in the franchise's life? Imagine all the time that was wasted trying to make everything old compatible with the new, playtesting, debugging, spriting and later modeling. Imagine that time being put towards other aspects of the games like story and world-building and map design. Could games like XY have been improved with these redirected resources? Could classics like Platinum and Black and White 2 have been even better? This is all speculation which we'll never know the answer to, ideas that may have never came to fruition because of the absolute mess Game Freak chose to entangle themselves in instead.