That's gens, not games. Each game has been about 1 year apart as of recently. Now looking back during the GBA and DS era, those games also were about a year apart (but sometimes two, and those usually were between remakes or starting of new gens), but those games also heavily relied on sprites or simple 3D graphics. So this problem may not be a recent thing but GF refusing to adjust to now modern 3D games require more work (wouldn't hurt they hired more employees either). Actually, let's talk about that.
GF in the past have mentioned they're usually about one or two gens ahead in the planning phase. But that's the planning phase, not the development phase. Let's remember, GF only has about 200 employees (and not all of them are people who work on the games). Whenever they're in the development phase of a game they would be all hands on deck, there would be little to no one working on the game after it (they may be coming up with ideas but aside a notepad document and a few drawings of places and characters probably nothing in-depth). Then once they're done with one game they probably immediately start working on the next (they may actually even start once the "current" game has entered alpha/beta stage where the only thing it needs is the final polishing). So while they may have three years between gens, they only have a year to actually develop the games within the gen. And let's also remember GF had said, at the moment, they're split in two teams: one working on SwSh and the other working on Town; and there's implications that Town has the bulk of the game makers on it. So not only is SwSh only been in development for a year as they were previously working on LGPE the year before, it doesn't even have the whole GF team on it.
But hey, not to discredit GF here, they do manage to not only make a playable game but enjoyable ones too with plenty of new Pokemon, characters, and locations. Now some are more memorable than others and complexity of the story varies, but I've never played a Pokemon game I couldn't find enjoyment from or see some creative ideas (or at least in terms of a Pokemon game). And they do that all with a year of development... but now just imagine what they could do with these games had they have more than a year and/or more staff members (or hired out work, and I don't just mean to Creatures who they already hire out work too):
ORAS: Much like with Mauville City & Sea Mauville, they could have updated all major/notable cities & locations so they weren't a 1:1 recreation of their simpler Gen III/GBA counterparts. Oh, and they could have maybe also had time to make Battle Frontier!
Z: Now there was a sort of legitimate reason to skip Z, the 20th Anniversary was coming and so they wanted a new gen rather then the third version of the current games. BUT F@#$ that! How about instead push ORAS after Z and then give Z four years of development time. Then in Z version have the story involve the player hopping through Hoopa's rings to all over location in the Pokemon world, revisiting/meeting past gens and characters (and post game this would include the Legendary hunt where you actually went to a location that Legendary resided in their original games). You could have maybe even hinted at ORAS this way, like you visit Mauville City but it's as it looked in the Gen III games and you meet a younger Wattson & Dock deciding whether they should build a large cargo ship or a drill platform. And due to the player's interference, Wattson gets inspired to do the drill platform project while also reaching out to make contact with Kalos, thus explaining the sudden odd connection between the two cities and why we have the Sea Mauville instead of Abandoned Ship in ORAS. Though obviously Z itself would be a bookend for XY, answering or at least going deeper into mysteries presented in XY.
SM: Hard to say for this as it's the base game so in a way it's supposed to be simple. Maybe here they could have worked on making Alola feel a bit less straightforward and including in locations which technically exist but we either don't get to see (the golf course) or barely explore (the shrine/temple surrounding the Lake of the Sunne/Moone).
USUM: If the idea of these games is that they're an alternate Alola where slight differences happened, they could have gone all the way with it! Instead of Gladion running away & Lillie stay behind, change it so that both tried to escape but Gladion willfully stayed behind to let Lillie escape and somehow ended up with Team Skull (they could always play the ol' amnesia card, during the sloppy escape Lillie get knocked out but instead of Kukui finding her it was Team Skull). Instead of Hau being from Alola in this alternate world his dad took him to the city to raise him and Hau isn't that much into the Alolan culture being a city kid now. Then we got all the stuff they could do with the Ultra Recon Squad (like actually having their involvement change Lusamine's personality and goals in a way the player can see; maybe using the alternate Gladion in some way like after the escape he was told exactly what was happening and was allowed to be included in the fold so he's actively supporting the Aether Foundation and his mother instead of opposing it) and, of course, the Ultra Space worlds; especially Ultra Megalopolis.
LGPE: Not going to mention things like left out Abilities or cross gen evos since that was an intentional exclusion. Rather, like with ORAS, maybe redesign a few places now we're in 3D and not restricted by sprites. Add in new locations so we're not exploring same old Kanto, or include the Sevii Islands like you did in FRLG (in fact where is also the Trainer Tower)? Seeing Proton was nice but how about the other Executives?
Z: Now there was a sort of legitimate reason to skip Z, the 20th Anniversary was coming and so they wanted a new gen rather then the third version of the current games. BUT F@#$ that! How about instead push ORAS after Z and then give Z four years of development time. Then in Z version have the story involve the player hopping through Hoopa's rings to all over location in the Pokemon world, revisiting/meeting past gens and characters (and post game this would include the Legendary hunt where you actually went to a location that Legendary resided in their original games). You could have maybe even hinted at ORAS this way, like you visit Mauville City but it's as it looked in the Gen III games and you meet a younger Wattson & Dock deciding whether they should build a large cargo ship or a drill platform. And due to the player's interference, Wattson gets inspired to do the drill platform project while also reaching out to make contact with Kalos, thus explaining the sudden odd connection between the two cities and why we have the Sea Mauville instead of Abandoned Ship in ORAS. Though obviously Z itself would be a bookend for XY, answering or at least going deeper into mysteries presented in XY.
SM: Hard to say for this as it's the base game so in a way it's supposed to be simple. Maybe here they could have worked on making Alola feel a bit less straightforward and including in locations which technically exist but we either don't get to see (the golf course) or barely explore (the shrine/temple surrounding the Lake of the Sunne/Moone).
USUM: If the idea of these games is that they're an alternate Alola where slight differences happened, they could have gone all the way with it! Instead of Gladion running away & Lillie stay behind, change it so that both tried to escape but Gladion willfully stayed behind to let Lillie escape and somehow ended up with Team Skull (they could always play the ol' amnesia card, during the sloppy escape Lillie get knocked out but instead of Kukui finding her it was Team Skull). Instead of Hau being from Alola in this alternate world his dad took him to the city to raise him and Hau isn't that much into the Alolan culture being a city kid now. Then we got all the stuff they could do with the Ultra Recon Squad (like actually having their involvement change Lusamine's personality and goals in a way the player can see; maybe using the alternate Gladion in some way like after the escape he was told exactly what was happening and was allowed to be included in the fold so he's actively supporting the Aether Foundation and his mother instead of opposing it) and, of course, the Ultra Space worlds; especially Ultra Megalopolis.
LGPE: Not going to mention things like left out Abilities or cross gen evos since that was an intentional exclusion. Rather, like with ORAS, maybe redesign a few places now we're in 3D and not restricted by sprites. Add in new locations so we're not exploring same old Kanto, or include the Sevii Islands like you did in FRLG (in fact where is also the Trainer Tower)? Seeing Proton was nice but how about the other Executives?
My only complaint with GO initially was that it didn't come with all the basic Pokemon features at launch (no trading, no PvP, even though their commercials promised that; I'm surprised they weren't sued for false advertising). But nowadays I do feel GO has come into its own and is actually having story events now.
Let's Go is a different story. Infact my above post, while not exactly a criticism of LTPE, does show the lost potential it could have had.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who's seeing the writing on the wall for Pokemon Bank with their announcement of HOME. Though if GF don't make anything official I'm sure someone would make a unofficial tool that does it (because, let's be honest, all the games are doing is copy & pasting the data into the new game & deleting the Pokemon in the older game).
