I'm so sorry (but not really because I'm like Elesa to the poison point that it hurts) to have to make this pun, but I have to agree, marketing has just been really Slaking with the core Pokémon games starting with Sword and Shield and it sucks because I love this franchise, I've been playing it since the good ol' horribly broken RBY days. I want to be hyped about playing a main series Pokémon game again. It was out-of-this-world amazing being hyped for PLA even though it's not technically part of the main series yet it kinda is, that right there felt like a whole new experience, and I still remember being excited as all hell about playing Black and White back when it was being marketed. I don't recall exactly how many trailers were released for Gen 5 and I won't bother looking it up, but what they DID show us was enough to get me squealing like a Tepig. Oshawott was my very first Gen 5 starter, and I'm reminded fondly about just how good those games were (the animated sprites are what really had me like Blacephalon, my mind was blown).
Sun and Moon, however, revealed way too many new mons too quickly, and this was before the major Dex leak, which killed the excitement of discovering the new Gen 7 Pokémon on your own by simply exploring, which is the whole point of Pokémon, but even then Gen 7 is memorable because it was indeed a milestone for the franchise with it being its anniversary. In short, good marketing makes games memorable.
The thing that turned me and other people off about Sword and Shield was undoubtedly the Dex cut. So many favorites, POOF, and at what cost? Did those "high quality animations" get Baton Passed to PLA instead? I'm not crazy about the story in SwSh, either, though the Gen 8 Pokémon themselves are as solid as a Solrock and have great designs and origins. I would still love to use some of them one day on my team, such as Greedent, Appletun, Boltund, Toxtricity and Coalossal.
But back to the Scarlet and Violet discussion, I'm personally not following the leaks because I want to wait for actual confirmation, and I agree that GF has the right to release trailers/information at their time, not ours, but it's disappointing when leaks are literally all we have to go on, but should of course always be taken with a grain of Smelling Salts. If they turn out to be true (just like the SwSh leaks) then that really sucks because I think games should be handled properly by actual officials and not just a group of super tech geeks on the side that can somehow find out all this stuff. I'm hardly that excited for ScarVio aside from the prospect of using a Fuecoco and Larvitar on my team. The only thing I would spoil for myself before the games release are the starter evolutions.
What's even sadder about all this is that GF is still going to make bank regardless of bad marketing because if it has the word "Pokémon" slapped onto it people will scarf it down. I'm a huge fan of the franchise but I also know better than to just buy any Pokémon game day one, but that's more so nowadays because lately the main games are becoming unstable. Now I need to look up reviews, gameplay etc. just to find out if the games are actually worth getting (which is what I did with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and thank God I did. Pokémon Platinum is unquestionably the definitive Gen 4 experience. My $60 went to PLA, a much more deserving game) but it's insane to think that back then I did buy games day one purely out of excitement, such as Diamond, White and White 2 and Sun. Now, I have to be more careful about my Pokémon purchases which shouldn't be the case because I wholeheartedly love this franchise and just want to see it be treated with love again, not just for the money.....