>>27847828Way back when X/Y first came out, SciresM managed to data mine the entire game down to its last scrap of coding, and discovered there were 4 placeholders for games. These games, combined with Thousand Waves, Thousand Arrows, and Light of Ruin, meant that we possiby had XZ/YZ on our hands or something similar. Hoenn got announced a year or so later, and Sun/Moon after that, which surprised EVERYBODY.
What I'm saying is, this may have been planned since B/W2 or fuck, even earlier than that. It's scummy to me, but considering how fucking beautiful the games look, it's not hard to see why they'd save the most effort for the games that look the best and would 'connect everything'.