Let me clear something, when I say this I mean that the competitive aspect was never meant to be a strong part of Pokemon at its roots. Competitive Pokemon is a niche, no one can deny that. But really, its creation is a happy accident, and it was clear from the beginning that Pokemon was really only thought to be this cool collection-adventure game. This may not be a very well known aspect of the first generation, but human vs human battles in Pokemon were close to not be implemented.
There's a thread about that in the orange Island if you're curious, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a good illustration of that idea, and something much closer to the developer's original idea of what Pokemon should have been.
All of this to say that, yes now Game Freak / Creatures Inc. Care about competitive aspect much more than before, but at its roots it was clearly not the case, and competitive is still a niche that is not GF/TPC's top priority