SwSh Is Pokemon losing steam?

[Grass Type Gardenia]

Yeah, anger in the fandom have been boiling for a long time. I think it was Gen 5 where the anger started to grow. Gradually over time with each game after game, gen after gen. But I think what finally caused the lid to fly off was the Dexit thing. The Boldure that finally bodyslammed the Numel's back, and it's just about to get messy from here on out unless GF change their game for the better. Perhaps with the Gen 4 Remake, but that remains to be seen.

Yeah, it's ever since Smartphones came into being that Consoles have finally gotten themselves some competition, especially when Microtransactions became more and more of a thing. When I saw Pokemon Masters revealed in May, that made me worried for the direction TPCi is going to go. Although generous of unlocking characters via story rather than spending money, it's also the lack of showcasing any new info for a long stretch of time compared with Sun and Moon. Yes they did got carried away, it did give us the hype for the new games to come out. SwSh on the otherhand is like a desert so far. Perhaps because the company is trying to market more on their other stuff like Detective Pikachu, Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution and Pokemon Masters. Plus there isn't much hype nor advertisements in the movies nor anime (as of yet), as if SwSh is some sort of reboot to the entire series or something. This is bad marketing that is just lacking, at least the past 7 Gens market them well.

 

[NealIRC]

^ Eh, what's wrong with Gen 5?

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

^ Eh, what's wrong with Gen 5?

Exactly, it's just think it was around there if I remember that the hate began kicking up. Perhaps it's to do with the unoriginal looks of the Unova Pokemon.

 

[Lunala]

But so many of the Pokemon in Gen 5 are well-loved. I feel like people who think Gen 5 Pokemon are unlikable ignore their large fandoms.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

But so many of the Pokemon in Gen 5 are well-loved. I feel like people who think Gen 5 Pokemon are unlikable ignore their large fandoms.

I do not know where the anger and hatred started, but for all I know it was building up gradually until only this year with this whole Dexit thing.

 

[Esserise]

People would have been upset about Dexit one way or the other. I don't think there's anything "building up"; I think what you're seeing is just the natural phenomenon of new entries in established series having detractors. There are inevitably going to be certain things about any new product that not everybody is going to like.

 

[KrspaceT]

People would have been upset about Dexit one way or the other. I don't think there's anything "building up"; I think what you're seeing is just the natural phenomenon of new entries in established series having detractors. There are inevitably going to be certain things about any new product that not everybody is going to like.

I did not see this sort of thing with Gens 6 and 7....or Breath.....or Mario O.....or Smash Ultimate....or For Wii U......or Three Houses......Or Star Allies......Doom Eternal.......

This is what you see in things like Marvel vs Capcom Ultimate....though I certainly expect better sales with Pokemon than MvC can.

 

[Oriden]

I did not see this sort of thing with Gens 6 and 7....or Breath.....or Mario O.....or Smash Ultimate....or For Wii U......or Three Houses......Or Star Allies......Doom Eternal.......

This is what you see in things like Marvel vs Capcom Ultimate....though I certainly expect better sales with Pokemon than MvC can.

A lot of people have bitched about Gen 6 and 7... and pretty much every gen to ever exist so yeah- it's not something that was building up. Dexit was just a single spark of major outrage, not the culmination of years of anger.

 

[Phosphene]

Dexit was just a single spark of major outrage, not the culmination of years of anger.

I disagree. I think Dexit was the culmination of the anger directed at gens 6 and 7. Folks have been pretty hard on the past two generations, calling them lazy and terrible and easy etc, and were pretty fearful of SwSh continuing what they saw as bad trends started in gens 6 and 7. Some were pretty pessimistic about gen 8’s future, and were unhappy with some new features such as Dynamax. People seemed to see Dexit as the epitome of awful, even if it wasn’t related to the things they took issue with. I saw a lot of people claim that they were tired of making excuses for GameFreak’s, in their opinion, poor choices and laziness, and that Dexit could not be ignored. A lot of people claimed that Dexit was the straw that broke the camel’s back, for them and for the community. Basically, Dexit served as an outlet for people’s anger, something for them to direct their frustrations with the recent games at. I believe this is why some fans believe Pokémon is now “losing steam.” I think it’s akin to how gen 5 seemed to really upset some fans as it was, in their opinion, the low point of a franchise heading downhill.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

I disagree. I think Dexit was the culmination of the anger directed at gens 6 and 7. Folks have been pretty hard on the past two generations, calling them lazy and terrible and easy etc, and were pretty fearful of SwSh continuing what they saw as bad trends started in gens 6 and 7. Some were pretty pessimistic about gen 8’s future, and were unhappy with some new features such as Dynamax. People seemed to see Dexit as the epitome of awful, even if it wasn’t related to the things they took issue with. I saw a lot of people claim that they were tired of making excuses for GameFreak’s, in their opinion, poor choices and laziness, and that Dexit could not be ignored. A lot of people claimed that Dexit was the straw that broke the camel’s back, for them and for the community. Basically, Dexit served as an outlet for people’s anger, something for them to direct their frustrations with the recent games at. I believe this is why some fans believe Pokémon is now “losing steam.” I think it’s akin to how gen 5 seemed to really upset some fans as it was, in their opinion, the low point of a franchise heading downhill.

Gen 5 had a lot of interesting things in it, and whilst Gen 4 was the franchise's peak, Gen 5 was it's high noon before it's slow decline. There was a lot of things that's happened to cause the franchise to decline. Here are some reasons to this starting with Gen 6.

1. Gen 6 was the first 3D Pokemon game so would be hard for them to get the grips of the new technology, which improved gradually in Gen 7 and now Gen 8.

2. Yokai Watch was a fad that sprang up suddenly throughout Japan at the same time as Gen 6 in which caused it to struggle. But yet when Gen 7 came out, the fad for Yokai Watch died down. For how long? Only time will tell.

3. Tablets and phone games were beginning to become more and more popular, and as a result had caused one of their main target audiences, children to be spoilt of choices. Masuda did say that GF are making the newer Pokemon games easier to cater to such people that can't sit down for more than five minutes before turning to something else.

4. X and Y's anime and movie formula had become stagnant with the same formula since Gen 1 and are wanting to make a change with Gen 7. Although the lack of advertisement for Gen 8 with the anime and movies makes it lacking to what makes them Pokemon.

At the end of the day, it's mostly to do with a combination of lack of understanding to using newer technology to it's potential and changing times with the mobile market.

 

[Oriden]

I disagree. I think Dexit was the culmination of the anger directed at gens 6 and 7. Folks have been pretty hard on the past two generations, calling them lazy and terrible and easy etc, and were pretty fearful of SwSh continuing what they saw as bad trends started in gens 6 and 7. Some were pretty pessimistic about gen 8’s future, and were unhappy with some new features such as Dynamax. People seemed to see Dexit as the epitome of awful, even if it wasn’t related to the things they took issue with. I saw a lot of people claim that they were tired of making excuses for GameFreak’s, in their opinion, poor choices and laziness, and that Dexit could not be ignored. A lot of people claimed that Dexit was the straw that broke the camel’s back, for them and for the community. Basically, Dexit served as an outlet for people’s anger, something for them to direct their frustrations with the recent games at. I believe this is why some fans believe Pokémon is now “losing steam.” I think it’s akin to how gen 5 seemed to really upset some fans as it was, in their opinion, the low point of a franchise heading downhill.

I assure you that the majority of the outrage surrounding Dexit isn't because everyone's angry at the last two generations- in general, people just aren't happy with Dexit itself. Not everyone has been thinking that GameFreak is lazy and is now screaming at Dexit because "Oh no, the epitome of lazyness!" That's just a subset of complainers who just love to throw that word around- and now others have only picked it up because everyone on the internet knows that the more insults you throw around, the more valid your complaints are. /sarcasm

Dexit is entirely its own incident. For some, sure, it's being thrown upon a pile, but the majority of the blowout isn't just a culmination of anger among fans- it's the fact that the event on its own impacted everyone, even the people who have been pretty much fine with everything that GameFreak has done up until this point- which has got to be the greater majority, given how successful this franchise has been.

 

[Esserise]

I did not see this sort of thing with Gens 6 and 7

Then - and I try to say this as politely as I can - you mustn't have been paying attention.

....or Breath.....or Mario O.....or Smash Ultimate....or For Wii U......or Three Houses......Or Star Allies......Doom Eternal.......

This is what you see in things like Marvel vs Capcom Ultimate....though I certainly expect better sales with Pokemon than MvC can.

All products receive criticism, but obviously not to the same level, because not all products are of equal quality. This is of course a massively complex, nuanced issue with a multitude of subjective factors involved - and that's all kinda beside my point, which was simply that the Dexit issue is something apart from the complaints that certain segments of fandom have been lodging for a few generations now. Even if every single Pokémon player had somehow been 100% satisfied with the past few games, the revelation that transfer compatibility would be getting cut off would inevitably be deeply controversial and unpopular, just as it was in Gen 3.

and whilst Gen 4 was the franchise's peak, Gen 5 was it's high noon before it's slow decline.

You state this as though it's a fact.

cater to such people that can't sit down for more than five minutes before turning to something else.

Well... can't, or won't? There's no right or wrong way to structure one's playtime. But a game that isn't designed to be welcoming to as many people as possible is knowingly cutting itself off from potential buyers and players. Pokémon has always had a very broad audience appeal, so it makes sense to make it accessible.

 

[swiftgallade46]

Gen 5 had a lot of interesting things in it, and whilst Gen 4 was the franchise's peak, Gen 5 was it's high noon before it's slow decline. There was a lot of things that's happened to cause the franchise to decline. Here are some reasons to this starting with Gen 6.

This is completely subjective and your own opinion. Gen 4 was my absolute favorite and even I disagree.

2. Yokai Watch was a fad that sprang up suddenly throughout Japan at the same time as Gen 6 in which caused it to struggle. But yet when Gen 7 came out, the fad for Yokai Watch died down. For how long? Only time will tell.

I don’t think Yokai had much of an impact on Pokémon sales at all (at least no more than literally any other game). It was hardly ever a fair competition. Plus plenty of people played both anyway.

3. Tablets and phone games were beginning to become more and more popular, and as a result had caused one of their main target audiences, children to be spoilt of choices. Masuda did say that GF are making the newer Pokemon games easier to cater to such people that can't sit down for more than five minutes before turning to something else.

People think that because Masuda took out the Battle Frontier and justified it with “kids prefer simpler tasks like in mobile games” it means that Pokémon is suddenly threatened by the mobile market. It’s not. If anything, it’s adapting to it and quite well I might add. Some features were removed and simplified to improve appeal. It’s not like the core of the game was overhauled or anything.

4. X and Y's anime and movie formula had become stagnant with the same formula since Gen 1 and are wanting to make a change with Gen 7. Although the lack of advertisement for Gen 8 with the anime and movies makes it lacking to what makes them Pokemon.

At the end of the day, it's mostly to do with a combination of lack of understanding to using newer technology to it's potential and changing times with the mobile market.

X and Y had a terrific anime, though. And it’s still too early for gen 8 anime marketing. We can probably expect some soon. Not sure how slow advertising takes away from “what makes them Pokémon.”

I will give you that I genuinely have no idea as to how GF is faring internally when it comes to experience with new systems/technology. But I would say that you’d be hard pressed to say with certainty that they have a “lack of understanding to using newer technology.”

 

[Homulily1026]

Yokai Watch isn’t a fad, to be honest, since the new Yokai Watch game absolutely dominated the Japanese game charts for a few weeks, which was pretty impressive. Anyways, when both games were limited to 3DS, there was no competition, and Yokai Watch barely did anything to X and Y sales.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

As some of you alluded to, Dexit was just the straw that broke the camel's back, for me anyways. My frustration and distrust started with Gen 6, I enjoyed XY, but like many, felt it was an incomplete game, we got ORAS a year later, and, much to everyone's disappointment, no Battle Frontier, in fact, they weren't even decent enough to make us a Battle TOWER. OH, but they did give us a MODEL of it with "Battle Frontier Project Coming Soon!". With the incomplete-feeling games, XY, and the oddly absent Battle Frontier for ORAS, my thought went "okay, for 2015 or 2016, we'll get Z Version, get Complete Zygarde from the anime, a revamped post-game, and possibly ORAS hinted at us going to the Hoenn Battle Frontier in a future title."

Nope. None of that happened. We didn't get our third version Kalos game at all. THIS was disappointing as I feel Kalos got done dirty and so did ORAS with no Battle Frontier, but it also put false trust in me that Gamefreak was doing away with third versions. I bought Sun and Moon on release day only for Gamefreak to go "by the way those games aren't complete, these ones are!" as they reveal USUM. One of the popular leaks is saying that SwSh will get the USUM treatment, the national dex will be reinstated and always was going to be, and that Dexit is just a publicity stunt so they can use it as a selling point for 2020's SwSh dual third version games. For this reason I'm very on the fence about buying SwSh at all, and I'm for sure not getting both copies. The only thing that's even remotely swaying me towards buying one copy is that the whole Pokemon League Challenge thing is like it is in the anime, it seems tournament-based and in front of a huge crowd, which is a childhood dream come true, and that's LITERALLY the only thing that I absolutely adore about SwSh so far.

 

[AngryBinacle]

Claims are more based on feelings and emotions than on actual objective observations. Yes, I'm disappointed in the Dexit. I've been disappointed with the lack of some good story-elements, player-agency and consistent difficulty-levels, as well. Every generation/game has some exclusive mechanics, so I can deal with the loss of that (Pokeathlon, Contests, Underground, you name it), neither do I care about Megas and not at all about Z-moves.

But QoL-improvements have been made the last few generations, the battle-mechanics, breeding, etc. are still solid mechanics. It works.

If Gamefreak was able to insert all 'mons in the game, they would have done so. I have no doubt about that. I hope they will look at some alternative strategies like patches/DLC's, for example, but for now we have to deal with it.

Anyway, it's far from declining. Pokémon may even still be on the rise. It's a stable franchise.

 

[AngryBinacle]

During the time Gen V news were dropping, a big majority of the fandom was raging at basically anything that gets in the way lol. The hatred eased over the time, and now it is being remembered to be one of the favourites. But Unova had to go through a tough path until it made its way up there.

Yeah, it definitely went through a hard "these designs are shit/unoriginal"-phase.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I think what people usually mean there is that Game Freak's perception of how people play mobile games influences their design choices when it comes to core games, e.g. Masuda saying that the games' trending toward being easier is because it makes the games more accessible to people who are now so spoiled for options when it comes to entertainment that can easily fill up their time, because all they need is a smartphone, which wasn't really a factor back in 2004. So if you don't like the games being easier or having less single-player content in the post-game, it's easy to zero in on mobile games as being the cause to blame.

In addition to this, business owners tend to think in terms of an economic concept called opportunity cost. For those not familiar, opportunity cost is a concept where the cost of a decision isn't just the outright expenses used to create a product, but also the money you lose by choosing one game over another. For example, let's say Game A makes you $50 in profit and Game B makes you $100 in profit, then you're not just looking at the manufacturing costs, etc. it took to make Game A, but also the $50 in profit they didn't earn by choosing Game A over Game B. Because of this, most smart business owners, especially the ones that are focused on making money, will choose Game B over Game A every time. Even though Game A is making them money, because it's not making them as much money, they'll ignore it.

Now in terms of how this applies to Pokemon, if mobile games are making TPC more money than the main games, there's a definite concern that Pokemon could shift to mobile. And right now, Game Freak is putting more resources in mobile and less in traditional consoles/handhelds. And what resources the traditional games do get tends to be implemented with the mobile design philosophy in mind: having lots of cheap, shallow experiences designed for a casual audience that's splitting their time between zillions of different types of entertainment. So the concern is justified because their actions show that they just aren't willing to spend the time and resources necessary to make a quality retail game on a traditional handheld/console.

^ Eh, what's wrong with Gen 5?

The problem with 5th gen made a lot of divisive changes to the formula, moreso than any game that had come before it. In general, the series was constantly building on itself from 1st through 4th gen, for the most part there really wasn't much if anything removed or downgraded from game to game. Every game had a Game Corner and a Safari Zone (except GSC which was cut due to development issues, but they finally added one back in HGSS). The Pokegear reappeared in Hoenn and Sinnoh as the Pokenav and Poketch, a trainer rematch system existed in every game since GS (the phone in GSC, Trainer's Eyes in RS, Vs. Seeker in FRLG, Match Call in Emerald, Vs. Seeker again in DPPt, and the phone again in HGSS). Every game since Crystal had at least one battle facility (with Emerald, Platinum, and HGSS having full Battle Frontiers). Contests were in RSE and continued to DPPt and Secret Bases reappeared in DPPt under the Sinnoh Underground). In general you didn't see features dropped in the next game, it just felt like every game was adding onto the last and Pokemon was constantly growing.

That all changed with 5th gen, which served as a soft reboot for the series and removed a lot of things from the first few generations. There was no regional gadget like the Pokegear, Pokenav, and Poketch and most of their features simply didn't exist in the game, no trainer rematching other than a select group of trainers in the Nimbasa Stadium (the smallest variety since GSC when you could only register 10 trainers to rematch), the Safari Zone and Game Corner were outright dropped (granted the Game Corner ran into legal issues over gambling, but they didn't even keep the facility and change the minigames or keep Voltorb Flip, they just got rid of it completely), Contests were "lucky" enough to stay in the form of Musicals but the implementation was worse, and Secret Bases didn't exist in any form. And there was no Battle Frontier in BW2, just a handful of battle facilities scattered throughout the region that didn't quite have the same unique mechanics. So for one thing, this was about where the "region exclusive mechanics" started.

But even beyond all that, BW had a lot of broader changes to the series that were very divisive. The region was a lot more linear than past regions, when before each region seemed to be getting bigger and more intricate than the last. The difficulty was easier, NPC teams got smaller, and the games were more handholdy than previous games. But the most divisive change, of course, was only having the new Pokemon be accessible in the main game. Your old favorites from previous games? Nowhere to be found until you beat the game. You were forced to find 6 new Pokemon that you liked to form your team in the main story. And while some people can do that, it's not fair to expect that so naturally that rubbed some people the wrong way. Sure there were some people that liked the story focused approach of BW and a completely new roster, but the fanbase was split on whether or not they were okay with this approach or missed what had been removed from the previous games.

And if you look at the interviews behind BW, a lot of these divisive changes were intentional and seemed to mark a major philosophy shift in Game Freak. They made the region linear and the game easier because of complaints of kids getting lost in DPPt. This reasoning sounds even more familiar to us now because they constantly preach about mobile gamers not wanting to spend a lot of time on games and getting bored or frustrated with this kind of design, but this started in BW. The rise of mobile in the early 2010s when 6th gen released seemed to give them something to latch onto to justify the sentiment they were feeling with BW. So yes, I think it's accurate to say 5th gen was the beginning of all of this. Yes you had BW2 which felt more in line with the 1st-4th gen games that seemed to build on what we had before and make the games bigger and better, but in a lot of ways BW2 was an anomaly (and still is, really) and 6th and 7th gen just continued in the divisive direction 5th gen started.

I assure you that the majority of the outrage surrounding Dexit isn't because everyone's angry at the last two generations- in general, people just aren't happy with Dexit itself. Not everyone has been thinking that GameFreak is lazy and is now screaming at Dexit because "Oh no, the epitome of lazyness!" That's just a subset of complainers who just love to throw that word around- and now others have only picked it up because everyone on the internet knows that the more insults you throw around, the more valid your complaints are. /sarcasm

Dexit is entirely its own incident. For some, sure, it's being thrown upon a pile, but the majority of the blowout isn't just a culmination of anger among fans- it's the fact that the event on its own impacted everyone, even the people who have been pretty much fine with everything that GameFreak has done up until this point- which has got to be the greater majority, given how successful this franchise has been.

Not really, the issues go beyond Dexit. On a larger scale, people have been looking towards SwSh as being the first Pokemon generation on console and expecting Game Freak to step up their game and it simply doesn't seem to be happening. Dexit is just the primary symptom of that issue. You're getting people claiming the games are "lazy" because the graphics don't really reflect a step up from handheld to console and in general, people aren't really seeing what SwSh is doing to take advantage of drastically improved hardware and an extra $20 on the price tag.

Additionally, Masuda directly cited higher quality models as the excuse behind Dexit, so the graphics looking not that improved just makes people question even more why it happened.

 

[Almonds]

Do you think the improvement in character design is also a factor that takes up more time/space/inspiration/whatever?

For those who don't know, there was a 2019 Valentine's Day poll on Twitter. The winners were from Gen 5 (N and Elesa, respectively).

I'm not sure about the Twitter/Pokemon demographic, but it's interesting to see that there's been other characters that are highly popular on that list and the Gen 5 characters outright won the popularity contest. Up to SWSH, it seems like Game Freak had been putting more care into designing the human characters to make the humans marketable as much as the monsters.

 

[godiego]

this is nothing new. this is the same song and dance that happened when Gens 3 and 4 came out. the kids from Gens 1 and 2, having gotten older, weren't into it in some way shape or form and eventually needed to move on. like, i don't think this is Rocket Science folks. Pokemon's been doing pretty much the exact same stuff since Day 1 and the only reason you're "noticing" these "changes" is because you're not a kid anymore and you've been able to play more than just Pokemon.