>>55786488In the case of Palworld itself, it's a survival crafting game first, a "Pokemon" game second, and there's not a lot of content updates yet. The PVP arena and new island should help.
As for Pokemon "killers" in general, most just suck, and even the good ones "aren't Pokemon" so they flop. No Pikachu, no nostalgia, no exact 1:1 copy of the types and matchups, no Gyms, Gym Leaders, or League.
Definitely reminds me of the distaste for Pokemon BW.
The idea of BBND lives within us all, and having a gen entirely focused wholly on new Pokemon ended up turning off a lot of people (I liked it.), and obviously they backtracked on it quickly until the Switch gens where they doubled down for some reason.
Hell, it isn't even a Game Freak thing, Pokemon fans gobble down Pokecock by the mile, yet all of GF's other games flop catastrophically and it's rare to find a Pokemon fan who A) knows what GF is and B) actually buys other GF games.
TL;DR: a huge chunk of Pokemon fans are literally literally in a cult and will continue to buy the games/merch even if one gen ends up slinging racial slurs and NPCs burn various pride flags, so long as it's marketed as a Pokemon game and features marketable plushie designs + Pikachu.
