Why is the Pokemon Company (and gamefreak) so afraid of aiming for the adult audience? Most other Nintendo franchises are appealing to adults now, and they sell great. Animal Crossing is aiming for adult women. Mario Odyssey is constantly nostalgia pandering. Smash Ultimate had extremely hard single player on launch, to the extent they had to patch it to be easier after complaints. Even Paper Mario has a more mature story than you would generally expect from a Nintendo game.
But gamefreak stands alone in making their games only for young children, with no appeal to the older audience whatsoever. I think they could sell so many more games if they aimed for adults too, maybe with a harder difficulty option or something.
It's a huge risk, I suppose. Plus, older Pokemon fans can be very fickle.
Tyler Stewart
Laziness. Manchildren will keep buying the games.
Luke Cox
because shin megami tensei exists.
Eli Ward
It's probably this. They could easily and almost effortlessly add difficulty settings and they won't because they don't have to.
Aaron James
Adults dont wanna play hard games either
Jose Diaz
/thread Pokemon has become a religion for pathetic manchildren Besides it's a very popular franchise so collecting these lazy games makes them feel like they are upto the latest fads and trends
Jaxon Cruz
The games aren't *that* popular anymore. Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Smash all sell more, Mario and Zelda sell similar. If someone wanted to be a trend hopper right now they'd be riding the animal crossing train.
Joshua Rivera
They feel like they aren't because sword and shield lost their hype very quickly 2020 belonged to animal crossing, genshin impact and among us and the new gaming console releases There wasn't much interesting pokemon stuff in 2020. Both the dlcs were equally lacklustre/trash and most people who bought the base game probably didn't even bother buying the dlcs My guess is they will announce something in feb 2021 that'll raise the hype again
Dominic Wood
Somehow I think children are still a more lucrative market then the older gen, and even then most of them would either just pirate or they're nostalgiafags who would be turned off from anything too different (see: BW)
Zachary Mitchell
They tried with Pokken and it flopped, so they figured why bother? If you want edgy Pokemon there's always the manga.
Their interest in the game is more a consequence of adult women having the same level of maturity as a child than any effort on Nintendo's part.
Tyler James
>"Mario Odyssey is constantly nostalgia pandering."
How fucking retarded do you have to be to think this? Mario Odyssey was praised because it WASN'T Nostalgia Pandering like 90% of the Wii U era games, all of which suffered New Super Mario Bros. Syndrome.
Aaron Butler
Because it's infinitely bigger and they aren't losing the general audience either? You can see how targeting teens massively shrunk Digimon and ygo
Josiah Mitchell
The gameplay was unique but there was definitely a lot of nostalgia pandering. I mean one of the worlds is literally just Mario 64's hub and another is clearly a very strong reference to Sunshine. Mario bros 1 is also playable in new donk city, etc.
I think the biggest example of them appealing to adults though is the ending of the game. The song that plays at the end was a generic 90s style pop song, just like they would play at the climax of every movie when we were kids.
Carter Bailey
This Pokemon fans are autistic and hate change Gamefreak knows these faggots love sucking charizard cock and fucking pikachu ass/mewtwo pussy. Why bother innovating when the fanbase is stupid asf
Daniel Nguyen
Sometimes I think that Unova really was an abortion, but not in the way that people usually seem to think.
Caleb Cruz
They'll buy it anyway. They figured out this formula since Gen 4.
This is actually a Nintendo wide strategy since the late Gamecube days. Reggie famously said the fans don't matter because they'll buy whatever they put out anyway. A few years later the Wii hit the market.
Aaron Kelly
It still has a niche competitive following though, there's clearly an audience for games like Pokken. It still sold well on the Switch.
Chase Bennett
I think it's pretty clear that strategy changed with the switch though. Mario Odyssey didn't have a peach's castle from mario 64 level for new fans. Smash didn't introduce canceling dashes into anything for new fans.
Jack Moore
It can't be THAT hard to just make an optional Challenge Mode like they did for Gen 5, but make it selectable from the start with none of that ass-backward post-game code swapping shit.
John Hill
The competitive is crap
Asher Brooks
magine putting effort in a fun game just to see the "adults" that would be playing it. I'd milk the fuck outta them too.
Levi Reyes
They come across as light, non-committal gestures. Keep in mind Mario Odyssey is 3 years old now.
Eli Wood
You don’t see the Mushroom Kingdom until AFTER you’ve beaten the game, and all the other references (aside from the SMB1 recreation in the movie theatre because Nintendo always loves calling back to SMB1 throughout the entire series for some reason) are very subtle. That’s not Nostalgia Pandering.
Nostalgia Pandering is things like Pac-Man Championship Edition, Sonic since 2013 and Mega Man 9 and 10 literally reusing assets from the NES games, trying to emulate the hardware limitations to a T and removing the charge shot and slide.
The Wii U era was literally nothing BUT “HEY, REMEMBER MARIO 3???” plastered everywhere.
William Sanders
>Why is the Pokemon Company (and gamefreak) so afraid of aiming for the adult audience? I thought they were already doing that
You're just being pedantic. Also it comes across as you're okay with the new references because they're of games you care about (64, sunshine) and not games you don't care about (3).
Hudson Kelly
pokemon is meant to be inclusive if you develop a game for adults you are shutting out half the audience and adults will still by the shitty new stuff they put out
