>>38200908I would honestly blame the vicious cycle of development Game Freak was going through around this time, the time between BW and XY was a faster turnover (3 years) than between DP and BW (4 years), plus after that the rate at which the games were being made increased despite the fact the workload for each game seems to be greater for Gen 6 and 7 at least from the artist's end, probably explaining why Kalos and Alola are smaller regions than the likes of Hoenn or Sinnoh.
I feel like after XY they should've had a 1 year break and released Z in 2015, that way whoever they would've gotten to work on it (probably Morimoto since Ohmori would be working on ORAS and Masuda would've started on LGPE), then you have ORAS release in 2016, whatever improvements were made in Z from XY could then be transposed onto ORAS meaning that where Z likely would've given Kalos it's own rendition of the Battle Frontier, ORAS would've gotten its back in proper form, plus you'd see more stuff like the Dexnav and Hoenn's equivalents to things like the Pokeathlon and Johto Safari Zone added into the game giving the region more over its original rather than less.
Not only that but it means you still have a game coming out in 2016 to coincide with the 20th Anniversary and given at the time Hoenn anticipation seemed to be even higher than any hype for Gen 7 that probably would've been a better move.
SM would either then be developed under Ohmori and released in 2018 or would've been developed under a different person, not Masuda, Ohmori or Morimoto so basically a complete wildcard in terms of development and have it released in 2017. Regardless given that if we assume SM started development at the same time as it did irl then that means you've got 1-2 years of extra development to deal with shit like the framerate, region, side and post-game content, additional features, etc.
Pt.1
