Why hasn't there been an attempt to dethrone Pokemon by a big Publisher lately?
A game like Pokemon would be perfect for a GAAS, there are hundreds of ways to monetize the hell out of such a game, it would be very lucrative for a publisher.
I can only think of Gacha titles, but most of them don't even have compelling gameplay and only appeal to lonely programmers in their late and early twenties.
What do you think?
Why hasn't there been a "Pokemon-killer" lately?
Because it never worked the last ten fucking billion times someone tried it. Pokémon will always be king because it's Pokémon, and sells on name alone. Game Freak doesn't need to try anymore. They can shit in a box and still make bank if they slap a Pikachu face on the box.
The mistake that every single dev that tries to create a Pokémon killer makes is that they try to appeal to people who are still fans of modern Pokémon games instead of the people who have become increasingly disenfranchised by it. Every time a new Pokémon game has released in the last several years more and more people have given up on the series, but nobody's really made any attempt to capitalise on that.
You can't. It's too big and its fans are too loyal. You have to compete against 30 years of Pokemon by default. You have to compete against nostalgia, over a thousand monster designs, mass-marketing and merchandising, a cartoon series, tie-in games, a mobile game, cross-promotions. Pokemon will go out in a fiery explosion of its own making before anything else kills it.
Pokémon is too big to fail. Like the Simpsons. They don't have a choice except continuing to make Pokémon games because nobody wants to go down in history as "the asshole who ended one of the most successful franchises in the world".
Thing is people really enjoy Pokemon for the IP, the actual games suck and aren't worth replicating. Those that replicate them just look like cheap chink knockoffs.
A game that really changes the formula is needed. And a darker premise like enslaving and trading humans and making them fight each other. I'm sick of shitty monsters
>Thing is people really enjoy Pokemon for the IP
This. There's a reason every single new game makes an attempt to appeal to Gen 1 fans. The franchise sells on nostalgia and the free buzz that it always generates.
You can find lots of pokeclones (nexomon, palworld, coromon...) made by indie companies. They target pokemon fans tired of gamefreak's bullshit, which is a niche-but not too niche- fanbase. Big companies just aren't interested in that kind of market since they'd lose more money than they'd get.
Because Pokemon is held up by their brand, not their gameplay, that's almost impossible to recreate
The more baffling lack of competition is TES, that is genuinely held up by its unique gameplay and most people can't tell apart the brand from generic fantasy, yet no one is even trying to replicate something Bethesda did in 2002 with no budget and a box of scraps
yokai watch and digimon are the closest thing as rivals
I think gacha "games" probably are their biggest rivals since they seem like the primary addiction of collector types these days. The most successful competitors are ones not fighting directly within the same niche.
They've perfected the formula and instead of doing what other devs have done with their games and adding/changing more convoluted shit into it that ruins the game, they've just stuck with it. It won't retain the old fans but it will always attract incoming new ones.
I thought OP meant as same genre of course gacha is huge even though 90% of them have boring gameplay
>They've perfected the formula
far from that, people just want to enjoy popular things and pokemon is that, games are in tragic state
There's something to be said about the timeless and uncompromising nature of the games.
It's not that the games have gotten any worse, just the fans have changed and gotten older.
And there are always new kids excited to get their first starter and go out on their first adventure...
There's a reason every new game is their best selling game ever.
I'd strongly disagree with this. Pokemon, like SMT, is one of the only series with combat that has managed to last 30 years and people are still capable of enjoying it. The gameplay is absolutely integral to the series and is a major draw for a lot of people. No one would like, create, or bother with games like TPDP if that wasn't the case.
If there was another series that actually bothered with trying to have a similar combat system, it'd sell in droves just off word-of-mouth.
See Temtem's explosion, but try to imagine it wasn't a shitty MMO and actually had staying power instead of driving all its players away with all the shittiness that comes along with MMOs
This as well as Gamefreak's autism
>bottom of that pic
fuck you
Not reading this fucking trap again
I guess you are right.
Ultimately Pokemon is a game made for toddlers and their parents keep buying their kids these games because they remember playing them.
A kid will play anything, it doesn't matter if the gameplay is not very deep, they are just happy that they can play with their favourite monster.
>Why hasn't there been a "Pokemon-killer" lately?
Because you can't kill pokemon.
To make the attempt you would have to copy its core gameplay style and doing so would instantly earn the title of "pokemon clone" which isn't a good thing.
Here's the thing, they don't actually exist. For one reason or another people eventually go back to pokemon whether it's because the designs of alternatives don't appeal, the lack of pvp, the lack of players and so on and so forth.
As much as I hate to admit it pokemon has found the perfect formula for this subgenre of rpgs with some extremely appealing designs to boot.
Pokemon (actually fan artists but whatever man) has very good hebes designs.
>Because Pokemon is held up by their brand, not their gameplay, that's almost impossible to recreate
No, pokemon is definitely held up more by its gameplay than anything else. Its the perfect mix of simple with hidden depth in rpgs to date.
Pokemon is basic JRPGshit for kids any retard can throw together in RPG Maker in minutes, there's absolutely nothing in the gameplay that is hard to do nor is it a draw of the series as evidenced by the many successful Pokemon games that forgo it
>as evidenced by the many successful Pokemon games that forgo it
You can count all of them on one hand user. Most pokemon games without it don't even scrape 1m.
Ranger
Pokken
Snap
Mystery dungeon
Conquest
Rumble
Compared to the mainline games they're abject failures that don't even grasp a quarter of the potential user base. If pokemon were a brand driven series we would be seeing constant successful spinoffs rather than one or two a gen.
>You can count all of them on one hand user.
Pokemon Go and Let's Go and Arceus