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It's mainly marketing and visual appeal. The designs and art styles look good, it's about animals and adventure like kids like, and even if it's not consumed by adults it's bought for their failed abortions just to shut them up. As for the current adult fans, they were clutched tightly when they were young, that approach to marketing is a very strong one and even if McDonalds can't do that anymore for whatever reason you can still see the effects it had and then look to pokemon to understand the outcome.
There is, of course, the coomers that /vp/ eunuchs love to hate. I'm not sure how many of them play the games but it's no secret that sex sells so that's just another clever marketing strategy Game Freak can make use of, pulling in curious horny people who want to see the hot girls or guys.
And on top of that nobody is allowed to criticize the series because criticizing things made/marketed for kids is a quick way of getting dismissed as a manbaby/incel/autist/basement dweller/whatever other tired insult the average NPC has written on a list, regardless of whether the critic in question is right or not. This effectively makes Pokemon games immune to criticism. Something being socially unacceptable is an extremely strong deterrent.
The quality of most mainline games ranges somewhere around decent though it does decline. Game Freak knows they can cut corners and they're daring enough to push that bottom line further with each game but they know they still have to have a certain standard which is why the games look bad to okay and play somewhere around decent. They can get away with less because of brand recognition and emotional attachment.
Marketing is very interesting, albeit a disturbing since it's basically manipulation. Pokemon as a brand makes for a great subject to study into.
