>>53865543I actually wanna elaborate on my point about Go and SM here, because reading it over, it kind of comes across as random and unrelated to the rest of the post.
What I'm really getting at here is that most Pokémon fans aren't exactly closely following EVERY SINGLE Pokémon related thing that happens. The reason Go is relevant is because even now, there's a large subset of Pokémon fans who primarily consume the franchise through Go. More than you probably think.
If someone really likes the anime, and that generation's game gets delayed, are they gonna care? Not really. The people who primarily follow the games? Some of them might fume on Twitter about it for a week or two. But the game's still gonna sell, because it's Pokémon. One year of extra dev time wouldn't kill its sales even remotely. I would even be confident enough to say that the number of people who have gotten frustrated with the games' quality has grown large enough that most of the audience would actually respond WELL to a delay, especially if the game does honestly, truly turn out better for it in the end.
SV's reputation DID reach the normalfags, and I know this because I work at Walmart, and when the games were first selling rapidly, almost everyone asking me to get the game out for them were asking me if the performance problems were true. People know the games are enshittening. Making fun of the normalfags is fun, but we need to remember they're numerous, and they have power.