>>51208197>>51208197> Why didn't these two other multibillion dollar franchises get as popular as PokemonTo answer your question though, both Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon target niches of people who enjoy more masculine and hardcore tones. Yu-Gi-Oh started as a shounen and Digimon was deliberately a more "boy centric" alternative to tamogatchi. Pokemon was designed around being more broadly appealing.
Lets look at Airdramon. Love this freaky asshole. They look like a vargouille for snakes, even got a ratty skull and a more simplistic design for a dragon in Digimon. But its still pretty hardcore looking. Most people will just think its a weird freak and general audiences prefer cute simple mascot creatures, even if Airdramon is appealing as a freak dragon.
Digimon and YuGiOh play to their specific audience a lot closer than Pokemon, and the vast majority of Pokemon are designed around what an average consumer would find more appealing.
They're also thematically opposed. Yu-Gi-Oh was designed to be a homage to Magic the Gathering while leaning on JRPG conventions for character designs, and Digimon generally are Edgy American Comic Book styled that tend to mirror a specific character or story, both of which are a lot more specific than Pokemon, who even shed their JRPG Monster roots to lean more on cartoon animals and human careers that are easily recognized.
Also marketing wise, you can way more easily produce merchandise of Charizard as plushies, stickers, figures and whatever else have you than something like Blue Eyes or MetalGreymon, who both are extravagant in detail and thus harder to make merchandise of even with the company's value backing them.
