>>53771173There’s more too it than that
New games in general have the advantage of there being more Pokémon fans in general, adults playing video games being seen as more accepted, and being able to ride the coattails of 25+ years of brand recognition
SwSh had the unique advantage of being the firsts Switch game, and being released when everyone was forced to stay home while being given free disposable income.
RBGY had the unique advantage of a Pokemania (quite possibly the single strongest marketing campaign in hotel) being in full swing in the west just before it came out in America and started dying just before Gen2 came out
Gen3 has a unique disadvantage since that was a weird transition period when just when the initial audience fanbase had grown out
Gen 5 was on a near dead console
>>53771334Crystal kneecapped by incompetent marketing, it was released far too soon after GS (less then a year compared to a couple of years like every other third version), so they all competed with each other. Also they removes a bunch of features from the world-wide Crystal release so it ended up being too similar to GS to justify buying it in the eyes of most fans
