The only way I see that happening is Nintendo lending development resources to achieve that. Game Freak has been content with business as usual, even going as far as reusing assets from an outdated system like the 3DS. They seem resistant to the longer, more complex development cycles required for modern gaming and lack expertise in creating those types of experiences.

That said, I still hold out hope for a true evolution of Pokémon—one that fully embraces an open-world design. When you look at how other franchises have exploded in sales after reimagining their gameplay—Zelda jumping from a steady 5–10 million per entry to 30+ million, or 3D Mario making a similar leap—Pokémon's growth has been relatively stagnant in comparison.

In my mind, a bold, fully realized Pokémon game has the potential to rival Grand Theft Auto in scale, easily becoming a 50-million-plus seller. The franchise is that massive. And yet, even with lackluster visuals, poor performance, and restrictive, unimaginative gameplay, Pokémon games still push 25 million copies without breaking a sweat. The fact that Game Freak doesn't seem to recognize or capitalize on this unrealized potential is a real shame, and they stick to their legacy games that for many non-hardcore Pokemon fans like myself is not appealing. 

brother they could barely handle the Nintendo Switch lol. It worries me to imagine what GF would pump out on a system which supports PS4 level graphics…supposedly Legends Z-A — iirc from the Game Freak leak back in October — is already finished in its development, so *maybe* Nintendo is holding them a bit more accountable to stronger graphical performance? It has been a very long time since the last Pokémon game relatively speaking.

It'll follow the same pattern as usual for Pokemon: it'll look like shit but way too many people will pretend otherwise and/or make excuses; it'll sell like hot cakes regardless of visuals and performance; it'll be fun and addictive to play for a few dozen hours.

ok graphics, (all lower case)? Sure. But an overall polished game? I'd be shocked.

Pokémon is GameFreak's IP (mostly), they're free to create as much of a bad game as they want.

S/V and Arceus also sold very very well, so there's no real incentive to do much better, really.

Pokémon is as much a Gamefreak IP as it is a Nintendo IP, both hold 1/3 of it and the Pokemon Company holds the last 1/3.

But Gamefreak is the one responsible for actually developing the games.

Arceus is quite a different game to the mainline series, and it was a pretty interesting take on it.

SV is one of their best games content wise, but also definitely their game that runs the worst.

It's such a shame the Pokemon IP is THAT powerful that they can literally push anything they want and still have one of the best selling games ever. I still buy them myself regardless.

But at least their biggest problem now could in teory be solved with a better and bigger dev team and development cycle.

I dunno if Gamefreak can dictate the development cycle as the pressure to keep the series constantly receiving games is also not only their own choice, but getting a better dev team and having more people working on it is definitely on them.

We are talking about the world's biggest and most profitable media franchise, a little more investment in the dev team would have nearly zero impact on their massive profit.

Only if the visual performance hurts sales, other than that what motivation do they have to make it look competent?

Them seemingly taking the criticism seriously by not releasing a game or DLC last year gives me some hope though I still expect Legends Z-A to be quite rough on the Switch 1 even if it's not as rough as SV. The Switch 2 should hopefully be powerful for them to avoid having that level of performance issues again but other aspects like how outdated the visuals are and how buggy the games are will need a long term change to how the games are made.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. The new Gen games have released every 3 years like clockwork since 2010. They are also usually annouced in a Pokemon Direct in February of the same year - Sword/Shield were revealed in Feb 2019 and Scarlet/Violet in Feb 2022 both for releases in the respective holiday seasons.

Gen 10 could still be very likely to be shown in a Pokemon Direct this month.

Personally I think this is something that casual players of the franchise miss. When you go further into the battle mechanics that Game Freak ahve built 9n every generation, they have continually changed and altered the mechanics. I don’t know quite what you’re expecting in terms of gameplay for if you’re after real time combat rather than the turn based system Pokemon has alway used then I think youll always be disappointed because I doubt they’ll ever bring that in. Closest will likely remain Pokken tournament.

As for ‘unrealsied potential’, I think that concept is better in a spin-off rather than breaking the current formula.