I mean, that's just you. I think the 7th generation (Sun/Moon) were amongst their most experimental and better experiences in the series. 

Same for Gen 9th, except for the atrocious technical side of the ordeal and some gameplay designs(the gym events mostly).

I honestly don't expect them to do anything drastically different on the next generation appart from the fact that the Switch sucessor will be such an upgrade over the current that it'll bruteforce to simply perform better than it does currently. 

Yes, of course. Its my opinion. 

I have zero faith in GameFreak's ability to make a great game. I don't think it is just about the amount of time that is being spent, they just aren't a good Dev. Until they either demonstrate that they can make a great game or give Pokemon to someone more capable, my expectations are limited.

I think you’ve gotten ahead of yourself. Bear in mind that the mainline series has seen a new release every 3 years since Black/White in 2010 and they’ve stuck to that like clockwork. Gen 10 would therefore be due in 2025 and would be announced in the spring, like past instalments.

Legends Z-A will likely have minimal bearing on this. Legends Arceus was announced in Feb 2021 for an early 2022 release. This did not impact Scarlet/Violet’s reveal in Feb 22 or its planned release later in the same year.

In short, expect a Pokemon Direct in February 25 announcing Gen 10. They previously released Gen5 only a few months short of the 3DS launch so the Switch 2 probably won’t change their plans either, especially given they’d probably rather launch it on the Switch’s massive instal base.

Considering how money-oriented Pokemon Co. has become over the years, GameFreak now has to compete for relevance over their own franchise. And that has only caused more and more problems in form of corner cutting measures (taking features, taking mon, cutting the postgame into DLC, releasing games with clear bugs and absurd lack of polish...).

Rest assured, GameFreak is only going to accelerate this process until something breaks.

Honestly doubt it. Probably more due to the fact that they literally released three pokemon games in 12 months with bd/sp in Nov '21, Legends Arceus in Jan '22, and Scarlet/Violet in Nov '22. That means they probably had barely anything in the mix as of end of '22. So it makes sense they'd have a couple years with nothing. And then in 2025 they are gonna have another Legends game presumably early in the year before next gen starts, and then we should expect they'll have the next pokemon gen game for holiday '25 on the new system as per their 3 year cycle. So we should be expecting two Pokemon games next year.

Seems to be business as usual, pumping out Pokemon games like there's no tomorrow. This short break between Pokemon games is just due to them releasing a bunch all at once two years ago.

The only way there would be any evidence of them spending more time on their games is if they put off the 10th gen pokemon game and only release Legends next year, pushing off Gen 10 to 2026, breaking their 3 year cycle for the sake of quality.

Have they even fixed Scarlet/Violet? It's the only game in the last 10 years I have actually returned to the store for being poor, but would pick it up today if they have fixed the performance issues and other bugs.

I am hoping they take their time with the next release and actually leverage the Switch 2.0's hardware feature set to the fullest, if the game looks like a upscaled Switch game just like Sword/Shield looked like an upscaled 3DS game... I probably won't be happy.

Given the timeline, I think its unlikely the game will release on the Switch 2.

Nope. Still runs like an N64/PS1 platformer, with similar textures and pop-in.

I was watching some videos last night on how the competitive scene has evolved over the past two gens, and I'm starting to miss Pokemon, but I refuse to touch dried turds.

That's unfortunate, it's not like they haven't had the time or the money to fix it.