What will be the launch titles for Nintendo's Next Console?

[IcaroRibeiro]

HyrulianScrolls said:

^^^RE

Edit: ugh, this forums quote feature on mobile is broken as hell

Before Gen 9 it was just old fans complaining that  the formula was stale. Thats way different than everyone universally agreeing S/V were broken as hell. The franchise rep definitely took a hit. S/V were poised to be 35+ sellers easily based on hype and how Sw/Sh + Arceus held with much better reception, but won’t get anywhere near that. The fall off was not just organic. SuMo had some unusual circumstances coming at the very end of 3ds and the year PoGo broke out huge that led to it being so frontloaded.

It’s arguably the point where many old fans fell off as well due to staleness. I don’t think Nintendo is oblivious they are driving the franchise to a breaking point if they let GF keep going like this, opposed to making a truly great game again that would blow the hell up and probably sell a crapton of Switch 2s too. The choice is obvious. 

The franchise's reputation has been hit for at least 3 generations already. Pokemon XY was the last one to enjoy good legs. Sun and Moon have poor legs even without any big let down, and even well-liked games like Black and White didn't enjoy good legs, 11 million one month after debut and only 15 million lifetime. It's a recurrent problem here

SwSh reception was shit, the game was almost universally agreed as mediocre

Games quality impacts primarily Word of Mouth, but Pokemon is probably the gaming franchise that depends the least on Word of Mouth because Pokemon games legs since the third generation are nothing to write about. We can breakdown Pokemon purchases in two big groups: 

1) The absolute majority of sales from Pokemon come from its fandom, which is extremely strong, and often don't even play games besides Pokemon or simply don't have gaming as their primary hobby.

2) Pokemon is also a very strong Christmas gift because it's easy to market on TV and in stores. You can see except by Arceus no Pokemon game since Black and White missed Christmas windows, and no wonder it was the one that sold the least, less than Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, and mind Arceus was a game that was praised by fans

Scarlet/Violet opening sales were stronger because it was released in a huge platform, so group 2 here was massive, bigger than when Sw/Sh was released. But once Christmas windows passed the sales died because this is how the IP sales behavior for the last 8 years (even more so, if you forget XY). If Nintendo was dissatisfied with their current sales pattern they would have intervened already. I doubt Nintendo cares to "fix" Pokemon in any way