Pokemon needs to "push a little more money" into the series, a former Nintendo marketer has said.

Pokemon Legends: ZA is finally here. This means we have to proceed with another discourse. Whenever a big Pokémon game is released, there's usually talk about the series being underfunded and how half-baked the game feels despite how much it brings to the table. It's an understandable complaint, since Pokemon Legends: ZA is full of flat balconies, drab foliage, and barely audible voice acting.

It's incredibly unusual for the world's biggest media franchise to make a game so cheaply, and if the recent Pokémon Giga leak is accurate, the reason may be due to the game's rather small budget. Earlier this week, it was claimed that Pokemon Legends: ZA had a budget of just $13 million, which sounds like a lot, but it's minuscule considering blockbuster games from other platform holders like PlayStation and Xbox typically have budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pokemon needs to “push a little more money” into the series, a former Nintendo marketer has said.

Whether that kind of information is accurate or not, discussion surrounding Nintendo and The Pokemon Company's ongoing lack of funding for their prize cash cows has been rampant. Even former Nintendo marketing chiefs Krysta Yang and Kit Ellis were baffled by this strategy, saying in a recent video (thanks to GamesRadar) that Nintendo should “put a little more money into” something that's guaranteed to make money.

“I don’t really understand the strategy that some of the entrepreneurs over there came up with, because you got the sure thing… it sold over and over again,” Yang says. “I’ve never had a problem with sales, so why not invest a little more… to avoid having crappy trees and windows?”

That's a fair point, and when a game like Digimon Story: Time Stranger comes along and does what Pokemon does, but with much higher quality (at least from an aesthetic standpoint), you have to believe that Nintendo can't keep investing in Pokemon that could make them big money forever with as little investment as possible. We're hoping that Pokemon Wind & Waves (supposed to be the name of Gen 10) will improve the quality a bit more, but recent history will likely leave us with more disappointments.