>>57750957>>57751165Further to what second anon said, Unova was also deep into the recession of interest in Pokémon.
After Pokémania, things were already dying after GSC were released and popularity was in decline across the entire franchise for years. If you look at game sales, every year the mainline games had declining sales until Sword and Shield came out, and BW and XY were the two lowest points in that sense.
To that end, Gen 5 and Gen 6 have pretty strong cult followings.
I remember taking trips to Japan in this period and you could go to a Pokémon Center and it would be deathly quiet, except for weekends. Maybe four or five people inside the stores, tops on a weekday and 30 or so people on a weekend. Compare that to now where they're almost all filled to the hilt of both Japs and foreigners.
