>>45026252For every old fan that's put off and leaves, new fans flood in to replace them. Games especially are about getting new people into the franchise and down the rabbit hole of side games, TCG, merch, etc. Usually companies try to balance pleasing old fans and bringing in new ones (though the balance is generally skewed towards the latter group) but from gen 6 onward GF and TPC have shown they are more interested in bringing in the new rather than maintaining the old. Kids will badger and pester their family for games after all, whereas older customers know impulse control. Why gamble with people who are willing to buy secondhand or pirate when there is money to be made in exploiting children. And clearly people are still buying even though the products are objectively inferior, since this is the first big Pokemon game for a console/handheld (aka a new generation, the first on the Switch). The Sw/Sh sales numbers speak volumes.
I went on a bit of a tangent but the point is that clearly people don't care about the drop in quality enough or what happened to Star Wars might very well have hit the Pokemon brand. At the very least, Sw/Sh sales tell them they can continue churning out dogshit and people will lap it up by the bucket load.
