>>41674006The DS was a more popular console that normalized normies playing handheld games. For kids that grew up in the Pokemania days, its release coincided with them going to college, so the social aspect of the games could come into their own.
Ruby and Sapphire were on a less popular console and incompatible with the older games, so most previous fans abandoned the series. Also Ruby and Sapphire are downright bad compared to Emerald.
Black and White took a ton of risks with the franchise and they didn't pay off. Trying the "whole new dex" thing was an indication of Gamefreak believing that Pokemon was not popular because of the monsters but because of the games themselves, and it bit them in the ass hard. Then again, you have to remember that B&W came before Go, which inflated the sales of later games. Without Go X&Y would have sold worse, and you can see with Sun and Moon that sales were reverting to B&W levels.
