>>32852055>I definitely think they went down in popularity and went back up with the 3DS games and after the Pokemon Go craze.Yeah, absolutely true. But if
>>32851964's theory is that this resurgence in popularity allowed Gamefreak to become lazy, I just don't think that holds water. Pokemon has never *not* been popular. It's just been a matter of degree, and even since the Go craze last summer, it's still not at its all-time peak of the late '90s. Even taking into account the increased sales from Go, remember that S/M came out only a few months after Go released; it would have been complete or very nearly so before the new popularity became apparent. There would have been no way for Gamefreak to adjust their behavior at that point. They couldn't say "look how popular we are now, I guess we can take it easy on S/M and not put in some of those features we were considering," because S/M was already complete by that point.
