Data crunching the stats of the three starting Pokémon of the original games has found that Squirtle offers the best stats, both in the early game and later on.
Additional data crunching in the article shows that the overall power level has not increased significantly between each version or generation of the games.
(Score: 5, Informative) by lhsi on Friday April 25 2014, @12:40PM
One of the designers of Magic: The Gathering talks about this from time to time - in order to get people to buy the new expansions it can't be less powerful, but making things more and more powerful is not sustainable.
What they do it, as the game is quite large, they make a couple of areas slightly more powerful at the same time as making other areas slightly less powerful. Overall the level is about the same, and the different areas all get their own time to shine. It was compared to a treadmill I think.
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Friday April 25 2014, @02:16PM
Balancing is hard, especially when current card/mons/etc. can interact with those from previous editions of the game.