>>36613473Pokemon has never peaked. Hell, it never climbed the mountain to begin with, the mountain just shrunk itself over time until all that remained was a tiny lump that barely stuck out of the ground and took absolutely no effort to walk past.
It's a mediocre franchise that we only continue to cling to because it's like almost no other in terms of genre, monster variety, mechanics and consistency, and no one else can dare try to compete because they lack the brand power Pokemon has and would be outed as a knockoff just for also being a monster-catching RPG, making <5 Million in sales for all the effort they can pour into the game while a Pokemon game can make well over 5 Million just by being Pokemon, as well as not being dedicated to having high-end mechanics and features that would ultimately turn away anyone but hardcore players.
Hell, Pokemon only worked as well as it did because it was on the Gameboy (beating previous monster-catching RPGs to the punch), accessible to all ages and had major multiplayer features like battling others' parties and trading, compared to other franchises at the time like SMT that were still on consoles which would never know such benefits and were limited to a more mature audience.
