>>37309183Pokemon Standards is "if it sells at least 5 million copies, it's basically a success".
Alternatively, it's a success either way they go about it because the game costed very little to develop due to a large amount of reused assets, coding and such, in the instance of an Upper Version or Remake.
Even then, Generational Debut Titles have seen a surprising stabilization in sales as of Gen 5, generally looming around the 15 Million Range while Upper Versions and Remakes return some nice profits in the 5 Million Range.
This also doesn't factor in that the most profitable piece of Pokemon Media as of right now is Pokemon GO, and that Pokemon GO will most likely continue to hold this title until it shuts down (which is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon, seeing as how it's now being integrated into the Core Games as of LGPE, and Meltan's Evolution Method outright requiring GO to be achieved).
And lastly, while the Core Games might not have ever reached RGB-tier sales, they're balanced out by Pokemon's second-most profitable outlet, the merchandise.
Pokemon Merch still goes all over the goddamn place in Japan and even does fairly well worldwide, and the anime in Japan despite of its ratings is still doing a beyond-successful job in creating merch sales and elevating Pokemon to shillmon status. Just look at the Alola Season's most obvious example, Rowlet.
That little fucker's #1 in many's eyes simply because of its Comedic Relief Antics in the anime, and GameFreak even referenced it and adapted its backpack sleeping habits into being a species-wide standard if USUM's Dex Entries are to be believed.
Pokemon isn't declining at all right now, in fact it's elevating higher than it's ever been in regards to profits.
