>>55383983I don't think that the plan was to "sabotage" BDSP in a sinister way, but to keep it from crossing over with PLA's genre. In general, Nintendo doesn't like to risk catabolizing their own sales by releasing two games of the same IP within the same or similar time frames. However, they make careful exceptions so long as the two games are different enough from one another.
For example, Nintendo won't allow Super Mario Odyssey 2 and Super Mario Galaxy 3 to come out at the same time even if they are both the best games ever because customers might skip Odyssey 2 to get their expansive, 3D Mario game fix in Galaxy 3. However, they will allow Odyssey 2 and Super Mario RPG to release close together because the gameplay experience is different enough that they aren't concerned that the target audiences might abandon one title in favor of the other. This is how Super Mario Wonder and Super Mario RPG remake worked.
So, I don't really think that TPC and Nintendo told ILCA to make their game bad, but they probably did look at their concept art and say: "We're already working on a 3D Pokemon game set in a large, reimagining of Sinnoh with a controllable camera, overworld encounters, a new story, and open-world gameplay. So you can't also do that." I think that ILCA probably started working on concepts for BDSP before the Game Freak team started on Legends because GF was just finishing up with the SWSH DLC
I actually think that this is where ILCA struggled to think of what else to do with a Sinnoh remake within those restrictions so Masuda was brought in to help them do the simplest thing--make a 1:1 remake. I think that this is probably also why we don't get to transfer in Hisui Pokemon or Origin Dialga/Palkia.
