>>49528174>Just look at BW2 vs XY. BW2 is Pokemon as a series verging into almost fully fledged proper RPG territory. And XY is a free to play MMO where the story is just a bland hurdle before the "real" game starts at endgame. Guess which games introduced the refined and easy accessed multiplayer?BW1 was also pretty heavy on multiplayer content at release. The Entralink, Passerby Analysis, the X-Transceiver, the Dream World, the Global Link, introducing Battle Spot, and bringing Random Matchups over from PBR. There was also BW2's Join Avenue, which was enhanced by having other people visit your stores. Or Black City/White Forest, which would populate with more NPCs if you played with other people. Despite all of that, they still spent about a 1 year+ just developing the story and world of Unova. And people still consider it one of "the best games". So they don't have to cut out an entire fraction of the series to make it good.