>>36346631>They make the prior versions pointlessOutside of Sinnoh, no they really don't. Until USUM there had always been a pretty good gap between base releases and third versions, enough that it was kind of unrealistic to wait for a third version if you had any kind of interest in the prospects of the new generation. The third versions allow people who already enjoy the content of a given generation to get more out of that generation and are usually more oriented towards serious play, with each one so far aside from maybe Crystal introducing a more serious challenge and expanding the base games' postgame content.
As for the $60 pricetag, it isn't great, but remember that in Generation 1 and 2 you needed to own a separate home console and one or two separate games for that console to have anything even similar to a postgame. It's probably fair to call third versions "physical DLC" but that's only a problem if the expansion doesn't add something worthwhile to the base game or isn't worth the pricetag. Until Gen 6, GF didn't have any alternative options to expanding the content of core games aside from releasing new, pricy cartridges, and since no Pokemon are relegated to being solely available on third versions without back compatibility, you can't argue that the third versions are mandatory DLC.
