Pokemon has always been about one thing collecting Pokemon and the player's interactions with them (battling and trading etc...) everything else was chopped and changed around this aspect to suit the times for the target audience of the era, this is apparent in that Pokemon only exists because of the GB transfer cable. What you think Pokemon is about was merely the team at the time applying one man's idea to the Earthbound template after all Creatures were formerly Ape the the Earthbound team, the goal was never to go down the path you're suggesting it was to always build a subculture around the collection and player interactions of Pokemon this is why more and more features over each gen focused more on interacting with Pokemon rather than what you mistook the series for this is even seen from as early as G/S onward and why newer games will even employ gimmicks.

The franchise never aimed to pushed hardware because unlike most series it always had a clear focus on what it wanted to do and who it's audience was always going to be and this continues even today hence why older fans are constantly highlighting what they don't like but the games keep doing better and better, here's something you're mistaken on Pokemon is reaching the wider market it always has been it's you who is not part of it hence why they're going the right direction on all fronts not just from a corporate view even if it means leaving some old fans behind. It may not please some to hear that but believe me that's the reality of things, brand power alone doesn't maintain the level of success Pokemon has consistently commanded since it first released.

I honestly am not sure what is going on: though I am partially basing this on the anime and media around it as that is part of Pokemon as well. Gen 8 is very much been out of synch: Ash is running around with a Mega Lucario and using Z-Moves after all. I'm not sure how I feel about that...frankly I like Ash doing that but from a marketing perspective that cannot be ideal. Plus they handled Legends Arceus very...unusually, and in a way that seems odd. Like seriously, it sold really well but was barely featured in the anime unlike most main series games (including Let's Go)

Also I've heard that OLM, like several anime studios, are having problems. Which is partially why they may be having two recap episodes in a short span of time one last week and one next week (it may also be partially because the guys above OLM told them that no, the fans do want to see champions versus champions so please don't skip those battles).

Plus who knows whats happening elsewhere.....is Netflix still doing that live action series?

Isn't the anime industry in a drought of animators nowadays? Too many animes being done at once and not enough seasoned animators to go around. This and the fact the pokemon generations are becoming shorter and shorter is giving the anime studios much less room to fledge out stories. That and the aimless direction of the series, that certainly doesn't help.

You could say that, but is also about the sense of achievement. You are building your team, when first was merely a single basic lv 5, to do stuffs that will make you go even further in the world. Sometimes you change the team in some missions, but that's how it works a journey. It never felt like a burden to me.

But as @Wyrdness said, this is not what this franchise is about, pokemon is a TCG/Tamagotchi thing while the adventure is a plus/side stuff and I can agree with this.

But it wouldn't hurt them (it would do wonders for them actually) invest more on a game that is all about adventuring as a side project. They have to improve a lot on Legends Arceus

While I agree with your perception about Pokemons games framework, I think you're exageritng a bit the mission/goal behind pokemon games

The focus and vision about Pokemon is to sell toys and merchandise and it's arguably a more successful interprise than selling video games. That's why Pokemon has a separate company to deal with marketing and products. Pokemon already reached the wider market way back in the 90s with anime and movies, everybody knows Pokemon and Pokemon merchan is a easy gift even for people who doesn't care at all for either gaming or animes. 

The games weren't doing any better either. They were doing about the same from the third to seventh generation, with Switch generation been the outlier because of the Switch software boom coming from people who haven't owned Nintendo handheld consoles, but this success was given to more core gamers than supposed wider audiences 

Wider audiences though are more present in other Games, like Pokemon Go and Pokemon Unite. We can see Pokemon company is succeeding bringing in casuals to platforms they don't need to pay for. 

The reason why they keep releasing generational games is to release more Pokemons (i.e. more merchan to sell) and use this new generation to keep releasing new anime, movies and having source material to keep upgrading the host of their side games 

In this sense, they can drastically change the gameplay of a mainline game and sales are very likely to not suffer much, and even if they suffer most of their source of money (merchan) will be kept intact for as long the brand still fresh and light, and Pokemon Company is pretty good are keeping Pokemon brand clean and soft.

So I'd say the reason why they never tried to changed much their formula is precisely because gaming is already secondary for them. They have the same devs from the 90s working in their host, they have no reason to pass trough the hassle and challenge of changing much when their framework keep providing content to release their animes, cards and movies. 

I will be even more blunt and say if it wasn't by Nintendo sharing the IP I could see Game Freak changing their approach to focus only on mobile games and forgetting their mainline efforts completely, but alas it's a shared IP so it won't happen. 

I don't really get the complaints about game specific gimmicks not carrying on past the game. Like, we don't need every gimmick jammed into the new games. That would be a mess, and it would remove a lot of the identity of the different games and different regions. Like, imagine you get into a battle and seven buttons pop up on screen asking you which gimmick you'd like to select for this battle/move. It would be a confusing, jumbled disaster. I do wish that all of the gimmicks were as good as Mega evolutions, but at the same time, I would much rather each Pokemon game focus on doing something new (ideally with a limited Dex focusing on new and regional pokemon) than every game just being a messy grab bag of every gimmick they've ever come up with.

There are plenty of issues with modern Pokemon games, but the fact that they don't have Z-Moves is not one of them.

Scarlet/Violet look better than Sword/Shield so in a way that's going in the right direction but the real test will be gen 10 to see if they can improve things twice in a row.

Maybe you don't get it because you're using the complaints as a strawman. No one is saying that every single gimmick should be in every new game. The complaint is that the gimmicks are just that - gimmicks - that feel cheap just to market each new gen as something different, but often come out feeling half-baked and half assed, and then get thrown out by the next gen when some of them could stand to stick around and be improved upon.

Some definitely needed to be (or need to be) left behind because a newer feature came long to improve upon them (or GF at least thought so even if this wasn't the case), but others are cut for no good reason. Like Kneetos said, GF could have really put in the time to make contests a significant fixture of the series; even back in the early days of the anime, contests seemed to be an important part of the Pokemon world. I remember when they were first introduced in R/S, I thought they would continue to improve in future games and imagined that they could become an alternative to actual battles, and Nintendo/GF could market that for the people questioning why their selling games about kids forcing animals to fight. But nope, they were gone, then made a brief comeback tour for the R/S remake, then gone again.

What I don't get is why anyone would want to continue paying full price for new games with less content. Not even talking about features/gimmicks here, but a limited Dex. Gen 7 handled the National Dex nicely; limited the Regional Dex and what you saw as you went through the story mode, but opened up more mon after beating the game for those who really want to go the extra mile. And even if you couldn't get a mon within the game, everything was still coded into the game and you can trade for it. Literally everyone got what they wanted. Instead, you want less access to content. That's like saying that sports games shouldn't feature full rosters of teams and just focus on the stars and rookies that year.

That really isn't the impression I get whenever people complain about cut features, but if that is what you believe, I won't necessarily argue with you. Some of the gimmicks are a lot of fun and add to the gameplay and I don't think there should be any complaints about a game specific feature in that regard. On the other hand, some gimmicks suck. For example, Gigantimax was a garbage gimmick (and generally Sword/Shield was a garbage game).

From the sounds of it, Terstallize is a much better gameplay gimmick. From what I gather from the presentation, the Pokemon keeps their original moveset (switching to the simpler Dynamax moveset always sucked, because it removed what makes each of the different moves interesting) and being able to gain new typings and STAB bonus modifications does significantly change how certain pokemon can be used. Visually it isn't the most interesting gimmick (Gigantimax generally sucked, but some of the Dynamaxes were cool (if only they didn't suck to obtain)), but it seems like it will actually make battling more interesting, which probably puts it below Mega Evolutions but above the other game specific gimmicks in my book.

As for the Dex, one of the best things about the core Black/White game was that every time you ran into a pokemon in the main game, it was something you had never seen before in previous games. You aren't running into 1000 Zubats and Digletts every time you enter a cave, you are seeing something new (although the designs weren't always the most interesting for these new Pokemon). That gave the games a very distinct feel that truly made you feel like you were seeing something new instead of just a rehashing of the same old thing. I get nothing out of seeing a Ratata again and again and again, but I do get excited about seeing new Pokemon.

A more limited Dex also allows the games to do more with what they have (while GF often doesn't capitalize on that ability, they also have never really leaned into that, including about 650 Pokemon in S/S+DLC). I see people complaining about Pokemon battle animations and field animations all the time. As such, I would much rather a game focus on making 100 Pokemon's animations unique and interesting than a game which focuses on putting in 900 Pokemon with the same old cookie cutter animations. Again, this isn't something that the games always capitalize on even when they utilize a more limited set of Pokemon, but if I could choose that trade, I would pick a more limited Dex every day. 

The size of the Dex is a huge limiting factor to what you can do with the games, and throwing in the same Pokemon we've seen a million times before makes the experience feel like something I've experienced dozens of times already. I want a game which focuses on giving me the most polished, most fresh experience with a limited number of Pokemon rather than a game which carries around the bloat of almost a thousand Pokemon.

Sports games kind of highlight this problem of bloat by giving you big rosters stuck into cookie cutter games, that sell you on little more than a roster update every year. I don't want Pokemon to be the kind of game that sells you on a roster update every year. Pokemon games aren't quite at that point, but they also aren't at the point where they are providing a focused but polished experience. They are full of bloat so I won't really begrudge them for paring some of that back.

I agree on most things but the sales part because the games declined in sales during the GBA era but then halted the decline began increasing from the DS era the Switch software is not an outlier it's a continuation the decline was mostly due to Pokemon's wider focus outside the games when they decided to put more focus into the games again the sales started climbing back up and were even that far from 20m. The reason for the dedication to the formula is because it universally has appealed to the target audience, the younger generation, selling merchandise is a goal but the subculture fed by the games is a central important catalyst in the success of Pokemon's wider success.