Game Freak has further explained on their decision to cut the National Dex in Pokemon Sword and Shield and all future mainline Pokemon games.

In a Metro UK interview, Game Freak said the National Dex was cut because they wanted to introduce more changes and improvements as resources such as time and manpower are always limited:

We put a great deal of effort into developing each and every game as the project begins and we do feel that everyone having their opinion is important. But from a development perspective, when we go into deciding what way we’re going to take Pokémon in the future we have to make several decisions on what to put in the games and how we want to improve things or changes things as we go.

So as part of that we reached the decision to take out the national Pokédex and keep the Pokémon the way it’s been announced. There are many challenges we face as we go – different styles of gameplay we want to implement and we’ve got a lot of communications features that we are working on – and of course the one really big thing we always think about is how we can work to make the game really fun for fans.

And as we were working on all of this we took the decision to make the Pokédex as it is, and from a development point of view that’s something we have to do each time and we put a lot of effort and thought into making those decisions.

They also mentioned their decision to cut the National Dex was a creative decision, and their plans to cut the National Dex were discussed with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, which don’t seem to have any objections:

I think it’s fair to say that both are involved. I mean, in any design situation, resources and time are always a constraint on what you can do in a project. But at the same time from a creative perspective, it’s part of a discussion we’ve had at Game Freak with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, and we came to the decision that, at some point, we need to be able to prioritize new gameplay ideas. We need to be able to find a way to balance the right number of Pokémon and also still introduce new ways for players to enjoy the game, new gameplay ideas to keep the series fresh and enjoyable far into the future.

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