>>53498095It depends on how far you are going to go into it. If you want to play with a group of people that play together often and you want to not worry too much about using meta Pokemon, or if you want to go for total Dex completion in HOME/whatever game you get, then yeah you are missing out a lot when it comes to cartridge over emulation. Plus, extra stuff like 7-star raids or Battle Competitions can legitimately be fun to play.
If you just want to play VGC or Smogon singles online, just stick to Showdown.