>>58996837It less that Gen 6 was a catalyst specifically, and more that it is emblematic of an overall decline in passion from the development team.
The sales for BW sent a message (whether it was the right message or not) to GF that it didn't matter if you put a lot of effort into fleshing out a new region and developing a story that attempts to be engaging. So XY has a story that barely exists.
BW receives harsh critical reception due to restricting you to only Unova mons in the main story. They backtrack in B2W2, and the message they take away is that old fans demand endless inclusion of old Pokemon.
Xy is birthed in the era of the slop children's mobile game. GF decides that Pokemon games need to be quick and content lite to compete.
And then every issue that comes with 3D, it changes how you design Pokemon, it took time for GF to learn to make a 3D game (which they're still struggling with to this day), Pokemon has never been boundary pushing and that's easier to obfuscate in 2D, etc.
XY is a game that, under different development circumstances, could've been great. But a simple confluence of factors changed the core, and it ultimately did well enough to reinforce GF going down that path.
