How not so? I don’t get what you mean.
Supports every new thing and has new formats. Only one gimmick was disabled in the devs/smogon formats on the previous gen as it did work very well for those (but was great in the official ones)
So I would really like to know what you mean by it not about the new.
> it's not trying to progress Pokémon, to make something new or better out of it.
But it is addressing one of its "failings": No decent online PvP play. And it's only about that.
While the 2 latest "main" games addressed this, showdown it's still important, because building a team ingame needs some time commitment (catching/breeding the mons and training them) while on a simulator its "instant". Also, there are more formats to play.
Yes, showdown doesn't try to make something new/better out of pokemon, but that misses the point. Their examples were about picking something popular and making something like that, either by the community/opensource or commercially
Showdown is not that, showdown is not alternative,a rehash or competitor to a main pokemon game, showdown is better seen as a tool rather than a game, it's where you go to validate/test your team, it's where you play some alternative format that the game itself doesn't care. So it obviously doesn't try to move game design forward, if it changed things it would no longer be where people would bring their pokemon teams online. "bringing pokemon forward" is gamefreak/nintendo job, showdown is just a tool for competitive players, and it's not a tool job to make something new or better than the original game.
It's just a glorified "online matchmaker" why is it even being lumped together?
