In any case, as someone who hadn't really been into Pokemon since Gen 1 (though I spent a fair amount of time with Diamond and Pearl as well), Arceus looked potentially interesting. But it seems that asking Nintendo/Game Freak to even wait a month before announcing its replacement was too much to ask.
Game Freak doesn't have any real control over that though. Pokemon just hasn't been a games franchise in a very long time. The series is the embodiment of the whole Space Balls merchandising clip. The mainline games exist to push and tie into other merchandising opportunities for the series by being the primary mechanism from which new Pokemon are introduced. The series has become a mechanism to push new content. Every 3 or so years now a new generation of pokemon is announced so they can sell new merchandise and kind of soft relaunch the series for a new generation of kids.
As of 2019, which is the last time we've gotten official numbers for revealed publicly, the games only account for about 27 billion dollars worth of the revenue that the series has produced, and this includes the countless spin offs we have gotten over the years.
Merchandise accounts for about 83 billion dollars worth of revenue for the series. It is absolutely the main focus for the series and the games have absolutely suffered for that but considering that PokƩmon is the number 1 highest grossing media franchise it's kind of difficult to argue with their approach when it's making them so much money in such a consistent basis.
Because that's the core of the issue here. We aren't talking about a video game franchise. We are talking about a multimedia juggernaut that makes stupid amounts of money.