Admittedly you can still transfer pokemon around, just not as freely (and not yet, for scarlet&violet). Pokemon home lets you send pokemon from far back, and I

Admittedly you can still transfer pokemon around, just not as freely (and not yet, for scarlet&violet). Pokemon home lets you send pokemon from far back, and I know people who keep pokemon on there that they transferred forwards from the GBA days. It's not 100% of them (although, at least for competitive, that's somewhat of a good thing). Sadly, pokemon home support is expected to come spring next year for scarlet and violet. And competitively speaking, this generation is looking really interesting, especially compared to the disaster of the last one, so I don't think all's lost yet. once (if?) the technical issues are fixed, this chapter is probably gonna be the best pokemon game that we've had for quite a few generations, imho.