And with that recent Pokemon presents 80% of what was shown was other projects, so honestly I don't see the excuse anymore. It's different than it was a decade ago when the main series games were holding the franchise on its back for merch and the anime. Which we have like 4 total anime shows now. Gone are the days of one central show that took from the source material or made up bonkers stuff on the spot.
I think we honest to Arceus could have gotten delayed scheduling for the new era, if not for the villain of the fandom and the Pokemon world:
Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Not because the game is the most mid game in the series, but because of Money. And not just "fans will buy anything", it's fiscal years.
The fiscal year (aka what matters to companies) ends in March. 2021 to 2022 was their most successful year ever, because Legends Arceus and BDSP both sold so much, it showed that Pokemon unironically ignores common principles with games. "Don't make your games compete."
Why does Nintendo space games out by months? To not allow games to capitalize on each other's sales, so Splatoon 3's hype does not overshadow Xenoblade 3, or vice versa. What's the point of releasing two games next to each other when most consumers can only grab one?
And then Pokemon in 2021/2022 showed TPC that they simply don't compete with their own games. Both will sell.
What I'm saying is, don't prepare for less crunch, prepare for more. Prepare for more games in less time. Why only release one game per year? The reasons before are now gone. Capitalizing on their own sales? They just sold 3 games in a 365-day span, and all sold incredibly well, Scarlet and Violet is not selling less because consumers are satisfied with the previous products. And if they could, they would 100% launch another game earlier this year before the fiscal year ends, to get even more for their investors. For TPC this all happened mostly by accident, but next time they can be prepared. Legends Arceus wasn't even going to exist if Dex cut didn't make dev time quicker (it is true,, I can explain in another comment, there is also a Game Freak GDC conference. TLDR: Every time developers upload a copy of the project it used to take hours, so Dex cut + switching to AWS cut down on dev time immensely, enough to be able to work on two projects.)
The gloves are off. What you and I see as no excuse to not delay games, is to corporate Japan and America the opposite: There is now no excuse to not release several games within the same year, unless it is a literal impossibility. This logo will strike fear into the hearts of the people who simply want to help make things for something they grew up with.
The goal of capitalism is not to make a lot of money. It is to make the most money. To make the most money in the same amount of time, and to continuously beat your previous best, to make investments into your company more fruitful. While I want to hate TPC because of how they abuse their developer's talents and consumers, I cannot find myself to be angry at the player, rather than the game. The game industry sucks, and every company wants to be TPC. The only reason things like Madden are not similarly so broken is because the scope is smaller, and even then sometimes those games release very broken.
And IIRC 2023 report has already made more.
