No,it's pure laziness and has been since the gameboy days. They don't want people to trade they want people to buy both games. JFC Nintendo even sells them as

No,it's pure laziness and has been since the gameboy days. They don't want people to trade they want people to buy both games. JFC Nintendo even sells them as pairs without a single cent off the price for buying both games at once. People were mad at the split between red and blue. Yellow came along as an apology but still had to buy another game (yellow). When the N64 came out we thought for sure we'd get a legitimate pokemon game...we got snap and arena. Nintendo and Gamefreak have known for decades what players wanted and they couldn't care less. Every new iteration is an asset flip with power creep. I stopped after black/white since it was obvious we'd never see a real pokemon game. We had fan made MMOs that were amazing but chose quite stupidly to add microtransactions. Still they were hugely popular. Companies bully and buy out competition so they never have to please their audience and keep stringing them along and no company personifies that attitude more than Nintendo and gamefreak. I truly hope this is the year of comeuppance for companies who want us beholden to them instead of the other way around. The entire world is fucking backwards.