I do remember being there on that year, and people were bugged there wasn't one. Perhaps it was that they were annoyed X and Y didn't have an improved third version, but I do remember the rage right here on the Serebii Forums when nothing was announced for that year.
There was a lot of controversy over there being no third version to XY, yes. But I don't think it needed to exist in 2015 to satisfy that. If a third version had released in 2016 and SM released in 2017, I think there would be less complaints. As is a lot of people are upset Kalos got shafted. Some people to this day are still salty about that.
As for the length of generations, ideally, I'd like for them to take the same approach as the Super Mario platformers, the Mario Kart series, and (in a more loose sense) the Legend of Zelda series: one major release per system, which to Pokémon, would translate to one generation per system. Spacing it out more, providing some years without a release, would not only give Game Freak more time to work on these games, but it makes each release feel more meaningful.
I don't think that needs to happen for all of those IPs, but it makes sense for Pokemon. Pokemon is a series that's structured into generations, so it would be best if the Pokemon generations were synced to the hardware generations. That would require a lot more coordination with Nintendo because they would need to be informed about when next gen is coming, but I do think that would be for the best.
But what I was addressing was why Nintendo has done nothing to rectify the rushed nature of the Pokémon games despite it being uncharacteristic of them: I don't think Nintendo has full control over the IP, not even the main series. Nintendo would rather delay a game than release something in an incomplete state--if they had full control, I think they would've demanded a delay. I think something or someone is stopping or vetoing them (and I think that something is The Pokémon Company).
Remember that TPC is made up of a joint arrangement between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures, with each owning 1/3 of TPC. If you're saying TPC is overruling Nintendo you're saying that Game Freak and Creatures are both opposing them. Are they? I could buy that Creatures is, they seem to be the ones driving this in TPC, but Game Freak is probably overworked or exasperated. I think Nintendo and Game Freak would both be in support of longer dev times.
And even if Nintendo is overruled, could they do something to gain more control in TPC? Could they buy out Game Freak, for example?
You pay with what you get all these comparisons with Zelda I see online are stupid, Zelda is more expensive game. I am currently playing BOTW and while a great game the map is very very empty only handful of wildlife and the same enemy models over and over, but because Zelda has a bit of polish no one complains. If SCVI was polished but that empty you'd have people complaining for sure
Pokemon isn't perfect but I feel like people are way to harsh on them especially Game freak (to go from making handheld to console games isn't easy). The games are still relatively cheap you aren't paying AAA prices, I paid £36 for Scarlet on launch. Could you get God of War or Zelda that cheap on launch? No
IDK how things are in the UK, but in the US, we paid the same price for the Pokemon games as almost every other Switch game, which was $60. The same price as BotW, Mario Odyssey, and almost every game on the Switch (TotK went up to $70 and a few games are $40, but none of the Pokemon games are, they're all $60). So no, we are paying AAA prices for Pokemon and they're giving us less-than-AAA quality and polish.
I can’t speak for everyone else but for me, I’m not mad about the delay or the fact that they didn’t give a new date. I’d rather the developers take their time and make sure the Home release (& the DLC) goes off without a hitch.
What I’m mad about is the way TPC handled announcing the release. I don’t know if it’s because western accounts didn’t get a memo from Japan, or they discovered a bug at the last minute, but the fact that they just posted a half *mudbray* tweet mentioning the delay without an explanation to why on top of the original glitches, everyone worrying about getting the save data corruption, & canceling all of this weekend’s tera raid events due to bugs, it just comes off as unprofessional and a slap in the face to everyone who defended them up until now.
It just seems like they’re more worried about their integrity than being upfront and honest to their fans. Lumiose Post pretty much summed up how I feel about this in the second part of his thread
I wouldn’t be as mad if they just did a video or a more sincere post apologizing and explaining why the release is being delayed (maybe even mentioning if it had something to do with the bug from the tera raid event and explain why that was cancelled too). At least then it would’ve felt like they actually cared about their fans and wouldn’t feed into the idea that they only see them as idiotic sheeple who will buy anything they make
This, saying the original release date is a mistake makes it so much worse. If it was just delayed, that'd be sus, but still understandable. Even the best developers run into issues and have to delay games sometimes, and fans are usually fairly understanding of that if a little disappointed. But saying it was a mistake is what really makes them look incompetent. I've never seen another example of a developer mistakenly giving a release date and then correcting it, only delaying. Now I think they could be telling the truth and it could've been an accident. Perhaps the delay was decided on a few days before and communication on the delay simply never reached the Western marketing team, so yes, that would be an accident. But either way, that's still incompetent, that's simply another kind of incompetence. And that combined with the bugs forcing them to cancel
multiple Tera Raid events just compounds the issues.
I don't think getting an explanation would help much though. You typically don't get much of one in this situation. If TPC was asked about it, they'd probably reply with some vague PR statement like "we're addressing quality/stability issues" or something. If it has to do with the Tera Raid bugs, they're not going to admit that. Confirming that would just cement their incompetence in the fans' eyes and earn them even more contempt, whereas now we can wonder and speculate but we don't know for sure.