This motherfucker. Mr. fucking Ishihara. This guy is the reason the franchise has been going off the deep end, the issue extends far beyond the main series and whatever Masuda or GameFreak have been doing. Not to excuse what they did last year, but I think Ishihara's whole philosophy influenced the quality of recent games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunekazu_Ishihara
>manages all aspects of the Pokémon brand
>(likely) tries to get as many mainline games out as possible every year or so (more designs = more merch to sell, more TCG sets to make etc.), quality suffers
>spin-offs have been slowly moving to mobile after Ishihara saw the success of Go
>the few non-mobile spin-offs are Snap nostalgia-baiting and a half-assed PMD1 remake
>Ishihara likely arranged the Tencent deal, being fully aware of what kind of company he's dealing with here
>Ishihara likely arranged the Tencent deal, knowing that literally nobody of the core fanbase gives a fuck (literally just done to raise brand awareness in China to make Pokémon as a brand even bigger)

In my opinion, this dude is steering the company into a bad direction. It's a good direction in the eyes of the investors, for sure, but a bad direction for the brand. The reveal of Unite is just the beginning, expect worse.