>>39014801I think a big issue is the anime didn't have a lot of linearity. While you can complain the Pokemon anime is boring and generic, it stuck with a character and the same concept you could grasp.
Every season of digimon did something drastically fucky. Now, most of them are great, but there's little consistency meaning players can get confused on what their getting. Followed by it didn't seem like marketing had a goal so to speak.
I remember there were some digimon cards, but they didn't change art and were the same blue holo with a digimon. Can't print that forever without changing it. Digimon didn't have a dedicated behemoth, like Pokemon and Nintendo, and tried to do an off-shoot tomogatchi style thing that made it compete in two different markets, and do it poorly.
Then, with the games, there was never a focus. With Pokemon, there's a clear "Mainline" series, whereas Digimon never had one.
I'd chalk it up to a lack of specific marketing and creating a core skeleton to work with in terms of gameplay.
