>>32744328A big contingent was older players who remembered Pokémon from their youth but hadn't considered buying a main series game in years.
You're correct that the phenomenon was over by that point, but it still put Pokémon back in the public consciousness. That's of course going to raise sales.
(As an aside, if Go hadn't been so incredibly mishandled, imagine how much larger the effect could have been! If it had kept its popularity into the fall, and if they'd promoted SM within the game itself - maybe put in a small handful of Gen VII Pokémon or Alola variants a month before SM came out - I really think SM could have literally doubled its sales.)
