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At this point it's about 4 months before release, so realistically not only are the games basically just in final major bug squashing and translation fixing phase before physical copies start printing(assuming they haven't already gone gold), but there isn't enough time for the rest of the franchise to realistically pull content out of their ass to cover for a delay. If TPCI could be convinced to delay it then there'd be probably a week of meetings figuring out how to proceed, the anime's writers would need to cobble together the arc's outline and first few scripts in about two weeks after that so the rest of their production team can get to work and possibly scrap the last few episodes that were meant to set up Ash leaving for Galar so there'd be something ready to pick up right after the current season was meant to end. Only so much of the merch already in production could be released because it likely consists of all the starter stages, some of what we've already seen, and a few other pokemon we haven't seen yet, so either they leak all the new pokemon early - because ever since going 3d we've had small batches, my guess is it'll be between 60 and 80, and the first round of merch won't be near end-game mons besides mascot legendaries - or cut back on what they can sell/make more for the pokemon already shown which would hurt profits because they'd have warehouses full of inventory they need to store instead of ship out and possibly still be making more stuff which would also require time to design so could be a month or two before they've got things under control. TCG needs a lot of planning to make it balanced and get art made so it'll take them about as long as merch to get ready to go. And from there marketing needs to manage the entire rollout. It's not that it can't be done, it's that a delay means more work and less profits for the rest of the franchise while a new group of players are upset they have to wait.
