It's becoming increasingly clear that at some point within the next generation or two of Pokemon that the long-term 'core' fans will become noticeably fractured from the Pokemon fan-base at-large.
Aside from some of the points raised in this thread (that are often repeated on this entire board), it would do GameFreak well to really look at their development philosophy that is clearly flawed.
ExtraCredits has some good videos on things I think are relevant to Pokemon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pL4AzGBAsUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ44hVeVdEwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM2dDF4B9a4GameFreak's drive to further make the game accessible is making it harder for those wanting more out of a Pokemon game. It's often said by many here that Pokemon is a children's game, and that really isn't a fair assessment. It's true that Pokemon is heavily market to children, but from various interviews with Masuda/GF, their overall tone is that Pokemon is a game intended for wide appeal. The issue is that they are not focused enough on tying ease of access while perfecting the depth of their systems. Things like making breeding more efficient in Gen 6 while at the same time not providing a similar training experience and methods to teach advanced battling strategies and tactics is a massive problem. When the game does not acknowledge the depth of team building, a player may never have any guidance should they not want to be steamrolled in online battling or at tournaments.
The consistent removal/lack of Battle Frontier, Hard Mode, etc. is the prime example of this problem.
