The enduring image of Pokemon for me is a group of kids, in 6th grade, huddled in the back of the school bus on the way home, trading and battling Pokemon.
With a home console RPG, the image is always of a player playing alone. Even if its online enabled or an MMO, it sort of misses the point.
Remember that the original Pokemon became arguably the biggest game of all time on the most outdated hardware of all time. Game Boy was behind the times when it launched in 1989. Pokemon probably peaked in popularity around 1998 or 1999. Clearly, being an impressive technical game is not important for Pokemon's success.
Toward the start of this thread, someone stated that a home console Pokemon RPG would sell 10m copies. Someone else said 10-15m. The question is, why would Nintendo want to take such a big step backwards? D/P/P will sell over 20m combined. R/B/G/Y sold something like 45m combined.
I think it would be cool if Nintendo made bigger, more interesting Pokemon games for the Wii, but not an RPG. Another Pokemon Snap, or a 3D fighter, or a side-scrolling brawler, or something equally unorthodox. The two best-selling home console Pokemon games are 1. the original Pokemon Stadium, and 2. Pokemon Snap.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
