>>36687107Well, pokemon is a sort of special case. A little (and quite honestly not as good/polished for its era) game somehow created a worldwide mania that lasted for years. It expanded so much into anime, merchandising, etc. that even when one of the parts performs less than optimally, the others can pick it up. Pokemon is almost self substaining and massively huge. People throw the phrase 'the biggest franchise in the world' around like it's nothing, but think about it. Think about how many amazing games fade into oblivion after a year or even months. It's a bit pointless to compare pokemon to other franchises, because it's still so ingrained in people in ways most other franchises in the world can't even dream of. So yes, pokemon can allow itself to do the bare minimun sometimes and not suffer any backlash from it.
About blaming only one person for the course a franchise is taking: it makes sense. Of course, Masuda isn't some almighty being that can do whatever he wants, but when he's directing a game, he's the one who ultimately takes all the decisions. Surely he does that with other people's (such as shareholders) interests in mind, but the people working for him do have to listen to what he says. Hence why despite the controversy the removal of wild battles for LGPE caused in gamefreak, he still got his way.
Are people out there whose ideas would be better (or at least more in tune to what /vp/ wants) for pokemon? Most likely. Can those people go and start their own multimillion business? Well, good luck competing against pokemon.
