>>34607008The majority of the playerbase at the start of the game were bandwagoners and nostalgiafags. The former simply jump on anything popular for five minutes before moving on to the next popular thing to do the same thing. The latter are genwunners.
Secondly, the game involves going outside. It's no coincidence that audiences stopped giving a shit when they realized a quarter of the year you'd have to play in temperatures below freezing if you wanted to play at all (spoofers notwithstanding). The recent weather system actively encourages this, even, so it's clear Niantic doesn't care about that aspect.
Finally, the "game" itself is incredibly shallow. Once the AR aspects lose their "wow" factor, the entire game falls apart. Catching Pokemon is fun the first few times, but it eventually wears on you. Combat is braindead, though I can't fault Niantic for keeping it that way or they risk losing the remaining normies. No changes to the combat will bring people back, no matter what any autists on /vp/, reddit, facebook, or whatever tell you.
tl;dr It died for the same reason the main series died off in popularity after Gen 2. It was just a fad. Pokemon Go was hit even harder because it's free to play (and thus nobody felt invested) and requires real world interaction - something the general Pokemon fanbase (autists and children) won't or can't deal with.