Anyway we've now reached a point where I honestly have no idea what to expect as far as mainline releases are concerned. The Switch era has been so unpredictable and diverse with releases that it's now literally a game of anything goes now. So far we have had a POGO-styled Yellow remake, a traditional new gen game in Sword and Shield, an ARPG title set in ancient Sinnoh, and another classical new gen game in SV that's open world. And both SwSh and SV got DLC expansions instead of third versions.
Mainline Pokemon games used to be very predictable because for years they followed a very rigid formula of releases and games, but now it's become so much more unpredictable in that you never know what might happen.
Anything could happen now. The fan speculation is that we're returning to at least one of Unova or Johto in the future, but what kind of game we'll get and in what form is unpredictable. I'd be down for a BW3 or another Johto game since I love those regions, but I'm not gonna make any assumptions for now.
I was about to write something similar, but you said it better than I could.
This used to be so predictable. Well, mainly because the press releases tended to happen after the news were already blown in CoroCoro or something (or the games were already about to be released in Japan and had everything datamined, as was the case back in Gen IV and V), but there were patterns.
Or, well, there haven't actually been patterns for a while either (the Switch games have generally thrown curveballs at our expectations at every turn), but we used to have some sort of idea of what would come next. As of late, those were rather wrong ideas, so now even our confidence has been lost. We could be up for anything. Or even nothing, as
bdt2002 suggests.
I'm generally skeptical to a new generation coming this soon, though. Of course, the idea can't be ruled out entirely with all the shenanigans we've seen as of late, but such things take time to make. There's all the faff with character design and concept art and implementing the art in-engine and creating new mechanics and a whole lot of whatnot, and it has barely been a year since SV shipped. That's too little time to make another "flagship" game.
I think the most likely announcement is some sort of remake. Pokémon Something: Unova-something, or Pokémon Something: Johto-something. Probably not a main series game, maybe something with ILCA's name on it, or some in-house project by Game Freak. Or both, as the case turned out to be the last time. The probability tree already has a crapload of branches, and that's just the stuff that has precedent. I mean, if we just imagine repeats of what GameFreak has done before: we could be looking at Let's Go Johto, Very Black and Very White (BW1 remakes with HD graphics), Legends Kyurem, Legends Celebi, Very Gold and Very Silver (GS/HGSS remakes with HD graphics), or possibly even S2V2 (It's Paldea again, but with 20% more stuff! And still two games because that sold a heck of a lot better than one for the exact same development cost). These have all been more-or-less reasonable expectations by fans for a while, which is why I can describe them simply by throwing out nicknames.
But there's of course a possibility that they will do something new and unforeseen again, which was arguably the case the previous four times we were waiting for mid-generation games: In Gen V, we expected a Crystal/Emerald/Platinum-style Pokémon Grey "definitive edition" of BW, but got a pair of sequels instead. Gen VI, we waited for the Z version, but instead we got the first break year in forever and Gen VII the following year. Gen VII, we thought they'd do another remake after USUM, but got LGPE instead. Gen VIII, we waited for a remake in the modern main series engine, but got DLC instead - and then two remakes that weren't in the modern engine. At least this time, we saw the DLC coming, but there's no telling what comes next.
So ... yeah, I'm actually quite stumped. I can't even say something like "At least there will be new Pokémon or new formes to look forward to!", because LGPE didn't introduce any (and thus became the first Pokémon game since Crystal not to do so). Another game by ILCA could very well be restricted by the same limitations. That being said, the ILCA game last time was immediately followed up by a Game Freak game that
did give us new Pokémon and new formes, so I think
something along that line is a reasonable expectation for 2024/2025. Not that the new Pokémon/formes would necessarily be playable in main series games for a while, however. We still haven't got all the Hisuians in SV yet, for instance.
In conclusion: ???
