>>37428227From a business perspective, Pokemon is far from downhill, in fact it's still skyrocketing off of GO's boost and will likely see itself soar even higher as it overthrows another medium, the world of Western Film.
From the perspective of a casual player, Pokemon's better than ever, finally toning things down to "their level" in terms of mechanics and difficulty, and focusing on the Pokemon, Characters and Locations they recall most from their youth, awakening nostalgic warmth that beckons them to better times where there weren't as many worries in life and the simplest of things were all they needed to keep them preoccupied and happy.
From the perspective of longtime hardcore players who know this franchise could very easily afford to create a game that isn't a blatant cashgrab and invokes the magic that got them hooked on the franchise to begin with, there's a very distinct decline.
But of course, none of it matters, GameFreak and The Pokemon Company have the Lowest Common Denominator gripped by the ballsack and they'll continue to hold onto them as long as possible, and given the current nostalgia-happy state of the franchise (LGPE, Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, Detective Pikachu, Detective Pikachu's Mewtwo Film, the Red/Blue Adaptation Film and probably Gen 8) it's highly improbable they'll ever stop exploiting constant, low-effort nostalgiabait in order to appease those kinds of people and keep sales flowing, even at the expense of losing Japan as a key audience seeing as how Masuda apparently instilled an absolute obsession with the West into GameFreak and The Pokemon Company after what happened with BW, but Japan seems just as easily exploited themselves as long as there's brand new Pokemon to latch onto, like what happened with Rowlet.
