Honestly...at this rate I would expect Z-A to come out later in 2025, like at least mid 2025 like the May-July period, rather than early. Legends: Arceus was a peculiar case, but Japan's fiscal year ends in March and the more you look at the big picture, the more it becomes clear that Arceus was Game Freak's intended "Fiscal Year 2021" mainline release with SV being their 2022 mainline game. BDSP was inherently attached at the hip to Legends: Arceus to a point where when you look at them, the intent for BDSP to be a crutch to cover for Arceus in case the latter didn't take off well is clear as day. L:A was also very explicitly stated to be an early 2022 release in its reveal trailer, while LZA's reveal trailer just gave a broad 2025, that being an inherently wider projected timeframe than what L:A was given at the start. Also at this point in time, back in 2021 they revealed Legends: Arceus's release date back in May, alongside BDSP's, while in the same timeframe this year we've heard absolutely nothing about Legends: Z-A since its initial reveal, not even a more solid release date, which further reinforces now that we're gonna be waiting a good deal longer than usual for this game.
January of a year is also a pretty bad time to release a game in a vacuum, since that's the dead zone after Christmas when no one is really shopping because the holidays are done. Arceus was only truly able to get away with it because it was riding on BDSP which did come out in the preceding holiday season and L:A was riding on BDSP still being fresh in everyone's minds and always being marketed alongside it, so everyone was already looking forward to Arceus at that point and after playing BDSP wanted more and bought Arceus accordingly. Z-A doesn't have such a luxury since as far as we know, it's standing by itself and Game Freak is banking on it selling well on its own.
I also think at this point Z-A will still be the focus of Pokemon Day 2025 given that, and Gen 10 will come out in 2026. The anniversary line-up to release a new generation on the 30th anniversary as part of the big celebration, but there's also another reason that further reinforces that being the best move on their part: the timing of the release of the upcoming Switch successor, and at this point Gen 10 is most certainly going to be Pokemon's big debut on that. The original Nintendo Switch is in the twilight period of its life cycle with fewer large-scale releases now, since there are only a few upcoming games and most barring Prime 4 are small-scale projects, and Furukawa has already confirmed the Switch successor will be revealed very soon, which means Nintendo is getting ready to jump ship. Assuming it comes out within this fiscal year at least, that means Holiday 2026 would be the Switch successor's second fiscal year, which is the perfect timing for Game Freak to jump ship, and that's always been the timeframe they've aligned to jump ship: The DS came out in 2004, Diamond and Pearl released in 2006. Then the 3DS came out in 2011, and X and Y released in 2013. Then the Switch came out in early 2017, and if we wanna get technical Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee debuted in Holiday 2018, and Sword and Shield the year after in 2019. The timing aligns nicely, and overall this range of timeframe has always been ideal for Game Freak and for one reason: Pokemon is a system seller, but it also needs a reasonably large install base to make the most of a game's features since Pokemon thrives on interactivity between players. Waiting two years to jump ship has always been the ideal window for them to wait to build a solid install base, then release a game to get going. Which makes that more favorable for the base Gen 10 games, especially since by nature a new generation game is a much, much bigger deal than a third version/DLC, remake, or Legends game to the masses, so the timing of a new generation's game release is crucial in that regard.
So yeah, a lot of thoughts, but wanted to pitch in what I think.
