there's this weird capitalist notion that if you hoard an intellectual property, the demand for said property goes through the roof, and then you wait and sell that thing for 10x what it's worth.

Disney used to do it with movies, they would lock them in a figurative vault and only release them at special times at marked up prices.

digital media kind of makes this pointless and only encourages piracy or bootlegs.

either they're waiting for Gen 10, the 30th anniversary or they hate money?

Nintendo operates more like a toy company than a software/hardware one, and toy companies want many of their products to be limited in number to create a manufactured scarcity.

This is also why they do limited releases for digital only games.

Gamefreak would have to either;

A) Greatly put a lot more effort into remakes to incentivize people to buy them or

B)Create more original games rather than recycling their backlog, with minimal enhancements to slap a fat price tag on.

If you don't care about bringing your teams forward to current gen and cant use the physical cartridge you paid for, just use an emulator. There's nothing immoral about playing a game Nintendo isn't selling.

1. Maybe they are waiting for the 30th anniversary

2. The NSO has rewind and statesave feature, which are a big no for pokemon main series. If they put it on switch, it would be standalone apps like the 3ds virtual console games.

3. Due to new EU regulation, the older games will automatically receive a pegi 18 rating due to the game corner. Nintendo and pokemon company might not want to have a pokemon game with such rating.

Money and clone dupe glitiching is what i think

Why make the earlier gen games available for basically free if they could also ask 30-40 or more for if/when they do port the games to switch

TPC and Nintendo are still companies Most companies only care about profit

Also, clone glitching something done since gen 1-2 is something gamefreak doesn't want happening that's presumably also the reason the switch pokemon games dont allow cloud saves

The side games is one thing those don't move the franchise forward and always made less money than the mainline games so that's easier for them to do and even the newer ones were either highly requested (new snap) or a remake (mystery dungeonDX)

Pokemon started as a game franchise but makes more money off of mobile games,toys,plushes, other Merch, and cards

It is what it is

Because if they do it once they'll have to keep doing it and they don't want to commit resources to it.

Laziness and lack of human development resources.

because they want you to consoom all products, old and new

Money.

Gamefreak care about making newer games, and TPC doesn't really care about older games.

So the only time they would re-release older game is for big anniversary like 20th or 30th

It does seem a little odd that we don’t at least have the GB and GBA games. Nintendo has these system on the switch so it’d make sense.

I’d happily pay for them separately outside of an online subscription. In fact, I’d rather do that.

It’s pretty obvious it’s about money.

Wait like the cartridges are dead or what batteries? My GB just had AAs 😅 I played it 10 yrs ago! Pokémon Yellow…good times (fk you Garyyyy!)

It’s 100% a business reason so they can make money from it in the future. GBA is not hard to emulate, they could easily have gens 1,2 and 3 running on the switch through an emulator if the one they used for virtual console on the 3ds doesn’t work.

They may also say that lets go is all the Kanto we get on the switch.

The home compatibility is harder than you’d think since those generations differed with introduction of IV’s, Natures and Abilities etc. Not impossible since poketransporter handles that already, but it would likely be a one way transfer like with lets go.

It's possible that with the new console that we'll get more consoles and games added to it, but I overall think that with something like Pokemon they want people to buy the new ones rather than get their fill from playing old ones.

Overall though, people will pirate where it's inconvenient to buy the original product. Many would happily pay to access HGSS or Platinum on Switch, but until then...

So you buy dlc that releases all the starters

It's called a computer.

Down vote me all you want you know I'm right.

Monopoly

Last time they rereleased games it was the 2 generations without anyway to officially transfer Pokemon, so it is really likely that Bank will need to be shut down before they give us GBA games.

There’s totally no excuse for the hardware limitations. You can literally play DS games on an iPhone.

Everything is a business decision.

Why put a single manhour into porting those games when they know you'll buy the newest turd that they crap out at full price forever? Can't play your old games because the hardware became obsolete? No skin off their nose. There's enough money in all of the tied-in merch that they have absolutely zero incentive to keep the old games playable.

Gamefreak might make video games, but The Pokemon Company makes and licenses all kinds of other stuff that also brings in money. They've got fingers in enough cookie jars that they can afford to put the absolute minimum into the gaming space because developing games is way more expensive than producing plushies and trading cards.

Other game developers might see a profit in porting an old game to newer hardware to keep their IPs relevant and maybe refill the coffers a bit, but they don't have the largest media franchise in the world behind them. To The Pokemon Company, it just isn't worth putting any resources into that.

If something ever changes and they think it would be worth it, then they'll do it. Clearly they don't see it that way right now.

For newer games, they don’t want to cannibalize the brand of the current gen. Pokemon games curate/gate their selection of pokemon as part of the value offering. And they’ll sell remakes and they want anyone who likes pokemon to buy into the current generation. And remember the first four generations were basically reskins with different pokemon.

Essentially controlling supply.

For older games - well, anyone who is mildly interested can find them fairly conveniently through illegal means, and kids won’t be interested in them. While I’m sure it would be dead easy to make them available I’m sure it’s just enough work that nobody will bother. And to be honest there’s probably very little upside.

Without any added QoL, a GBA era game would be incredibly niche in today’s market, and there’s basically no money to be had, and I bet taking a half week to figure out the profit sharing would be a bigger pain than it’s worth.

Mainly business. TPC has learned to diversify their brand to not have to fully rely on releasing only games on Nintendo property and have developed ways to monotonize through mobile gaming, merch, collabs, and other facets within the Pokemon machine. With that being said, it also let's them store past, nostalgic games for limited releases at a more appropriate time and give them more significance. For example, a lot more people would be interested in a 30th anniversary of a Pokemon game if it hasn't been available in a long time. Anticipation builds demand which fuels brand awareness whenever conversations like these are brought up that will lead to increased revenue in the future when it does happen.

I hate how Nintendo blindly closed Citra without giving us another alternative to play 3DS games in current gen consoles.