>>56477737I don't think ever. Pokemon being a flagship handheld franchise, Nintendo making a handheld called '3ds' they had to force gamefreak to go 3d then. I honestly think they'd have kept experimenting with 2.5d, at least for another gen maybe.
But now handheld are gone so there's no platform for gamefreaks "1st party small 2d indie game"; pokemon was demanded to prematurely outgrow it and now they've invested in over a thousand models and the series has adopted its 3d identity, hell probably even open world identity now.
best case scenario would have been if Nintendo let GameFreak stay 2.5d cause they were so proven at developing it and it would still sell, and let 3rd party make 3d battle sim / possibly also adventure games like Gen 1-4
