>>36171888>The mainline titles have been decliningOnly marginally and even then, individual title sales have been literally been consistent with each other for over a decade, so much so it's down to small variances up and down. There isn't a clear trend downward and most of the variance in overall trends can be normalized with other generations to show that the trend has more to do with the lack of remakes and upper versions than lower sales. Granted, it doesn't change that sales are 'lower', but it's relevant in context to the variance.
>XY sold VERY well and was a big bump, but that's about it.Actually, it didn't. XY sold 16.29m, good but nothing else and totally average for primary generational release. It was actually ORAS being part of the generation and selling 2m ahead of the average remake that actually bumped the numbers.
And to go even deeper, that success is just compared gen 5, but when you get down to brass tax on that, BW sold 15.64, only a bit under the average for primary pairs. BW2's results were slightly better than average at 8.52m, but sans remake it languished.
Even gen 7, despite being the lowest selling generation to date, is only tens of thousands behind gen 5 and the average for primary or upper version releases.
Ultimately, the situation is just a little bit more complex than it first appears. Of course, that doesn't change that recent generations have sold the least since gen 4, but it's relevant to consider that gen 5 was the only generation recently without a remake until gen 7 and it's likely even though LGPE is only tenuously a remake, it will be lumped into gen 7 despite generically being its own thing, so no doubt parts of this will be out of date soon.
