OK I guess it wasn't too soon.  So this pretty much confirms to The Pokemon Company, all gens have to start every 3 years, no exceptions.  Even if there's literally no reason since Sword and Shield has been having longer legs then previous gens and they just had a huge opening with Legends.

It still feels too soon!

I don't follow the Pokémon franchise as a whole, but isn't it all connected? Don't they have to time new games to coincide with other new products such as anime and cards? Does Game Freak itself have much, if any, say in when new gens release?

I thought Sword/Shield released recently then I looked it up and apparently, they came out a little over two years ago.

I’m super far behind when it comes to Pokémon. I have the third versions of the first four generations and no remakes so Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum. From what I read, Black/White is where the series gets a little out of hand for me. I’m curious to see what the new thing in Scarlet/Violet will be though I have doubts I’ll work my way up to this generation. Pokémon Legends: Arceus seems different enough to dip my toes in. We’ll see.

Testing a theory with the quote.

Another year month, another $60 Pokemon roster update, now arbitrarily in 2 flavors again.  Guess there's absolutely no reason to play Arceus now.

That seems a little dramatic.

Why? Everyone's acknowledged that Arceus is just a prototpe for these 2 games. Why bother playing the half-baked prototype  when you have the hypothetically fully-realized version of it in the "real next games", and it's coming out later that same year?

Hell, give Game Freak a year and I'm sure THESE roster updates will be superfluous, too.

I think those people are jumping the gun since we know so little about this game. We have no idea how much of it may be like Legends and how much will be different. The timing is certainly odd though.

As Mop it up mentioned, we barely know anything about the game. I don't know one can jump to the conclusion that there's absolutely no reason to play Legends: Arceus based on next to no information.

Even then, Legends Arceus is pretty easily a top 5 Switch game for me so you should definitely play it.

Yeah, the reason to play Legends Arceus is that it's a good game that you play RIGHT NOW.

I'm also in the "this feels too soon" camp, and I can't help but think about what that means for the Switch's lifespan. USUM came out one year after SM and right at the end of the 3DS's life. It seemed like those games came out quickly because the console was getting retired.

Calling Pokemon games a $60 roster update feels like you're both making a large over-simplification and wildly missing the point of the entire franchise.

To make vast quantities of cash by selling the same game twice (or even 3 times) with some Pokemon arbitraily turned on & others off, while simultaneously putting the least amount of work into the game that you think you can get away with?

Oh come on, don't pretend like Game Freak doesn't deserve that one. Until Arceus, they'd been making the same game with minor graphical and roster updates since 1996.  ;)

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.

I like the look of the Apple Dinosaur. It's the most a start Pokemon has caught my attention in years. And yet, for some reason, it feels like it's a creature that I've seen before or has been around for longer than just since yesterday when I first saw it. I've been thinking about it today and it's weird. Maybe it's just better at blurring my memory of some past other video game enemy or previous Pokemon design unlike the Weed Cat.

I always go for the fire starter and this batch will be no exception. I can only hope the final form is at least decent...

Or maybe it means they're good at designing new Monz to fit in with the old ones. Also I've been told that it's actually a pepper, which I guess makes sense given fire type, but I'm probably still gonna call it an apple...

I'm always inclined to pick a Water type as a starter, so I guess that's Donald Duck Quaxley for me, then.

Quaxley isn’t wearing pants so story checks out.

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 Pokémon 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.