>>58327967It didnt but Gen 3-5 in general, despite being darlings for a lot of fans, underperformed massively relative to the rest of the franchise.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the games btw, its because Americans who bought pokemon games as a kid all started to enter high school or certain middle schools around that time where you couldnt like Pokemon anymore due to various social expectations , and then by the time XY, SM and Go came out everyone was getting into college age or adulthood where you can like and buy whatever you want, plus the MCU and Big Bang Theory "normalizing" nerd culture, so everyone felt it was acceptable to buy pokemon games again.
