>>49935234tl;dr 50 additional 3d artists is WAY more than enough to get the national dex into gen 9.
But that's expensive. Pic related is from glassdoor, if we take that average x 17 3d artists for 2 years converted to USD that's $1,834,724.32 on top of whatever their budget for the limited dex game we already know we're getting is. That doesn't take new animations or mechanical testing like unique moves or abilities interacting with the rest of the battle system, ect. I couldn't find exact numbers for pokemon game budgets, but the updated assets alone would cost more than most indie studios spend developing their entire games. Still far less than the 100's of millions of some of the really big AAA games. Most likely pokemon falls closer to the lower end of AAA in the 10's of millions range, purely because of how much stuff is in each game and the 3-4 year dev cycle per game despite their best efforts to operate like a small indie studio. In business it all comes down to money, and the sales have told them they can spend less to make more by not including everything. Pokemon is no longer a passion project where the resulting game is the most important thing, they have brand recognition to carry them and an ever changing multi-generational audience to scrub away the long-term effects of any missteps they make that would ruin good will with consumers. Even if individuals working on the games care a lot they're not the ones with the final say, if it doesn't directly correlate to notably higher profits then its not worth the expense and isn't going to happen unless someone can throw it together real quick without throwing anything else off schedule. 4/4
