Wasnt that the case in most previous gens too?
No, not really and certainly not 'most previous gens'.
GenI: The games were Red and Green. Yes, Ash got a Charizard, but that's just because it was the most popular starter. There weren't any differences between game versions. Except Yellow, which was basically the original games, but tweaked to have some animé influence.
GenII: Same thing here. No differences in game versions, outside of Crystal having a Suicune-plotline.
GenIII: The major differences in these games were which team was 'antagonistic'. In the animé both were seen as antagonistic.
GenIV: The animé had a weird fusion of the DPt-games. It favored neither Dialga or Palkia, did not feature Giratina, but included Pt-characters like Looker and Charon.
GenV: Everything got the shaft. Zekrom was supposed to have a bigger role in the original episodes but got
canned, Reshiram got
something in Episode N.
GenVI: XYZ happened and that was an animé-only plotline, Yveltal and Xerneas got a weird special after all was said and done.
GenVII: Heavily favored Sun.
So the only two you might point towards are GenV, which was a trainwreck due to outside, realworld problems and poor decisions (my opinion) and GenVII.
Is there no episode this week?
It's airing tomorrow.