Unsuprised_Pika posted...
Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet sold about 10 million more copies each then any of the DS games so I'd say they are yeah.
Also the Trading card game is vastly bigger then it used to be. Its scalped to hell and back for a reason.
Also I disagree on the stagnancy of late. They've tried open world and not always using the gym formula and the legends Series shakes things up pretty well. Arceus was a Open Zone strictly single player game with action and stealth elements focused much less on battling. And frankly they've been doing much better on characters and story generally. I'd say that started in gen 5. X/Y was a major bump in the road and Sword and Shield...well most the characters were fine but the plot was not.
Z-A meanwhile switches to a Real Time battle system which alone is a huge shake up.
Just because a game sold well doesn't mean it was received well. Sword and Shield was Pokemons first attempt at a Switch 1 game. It was widely criticized. Fans were fine with it being turn-based, but then noted that there wasn't much effort into making the game look proper. Textures were low quality and a lot of moves weren't even animated. Cinderaces double kick was a literal hop.
Scarlet/Violet was their next attempt. Coming off of Arceus, people had high hopes. But somehow they were unable to even run the game at a steady 60 fps, when games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, which came out for the Wii-U ran smoother with much more graphical clutter.
If the issue is budget this should have been addressed years ago. They are charging full price for games that quite frankly aren't worth half that.