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@krvstkvlt They're typically (or at least, if good) intense, place a lot of demand on reflexes and positioning, and feature non-stop action in a manner seen in few other genres.

@krvstkvlt They're typically (or at least, if good) intense, place a lot of demand on reflexes and positioning, and feature non-stop action in a manner seen in few other genres.

@BlueOcean I'm sure it could be fun, but in the same way that Skype D&D can be fun, online Cards Against Humanity, or solo MMO play. These games can be played in such a manner, but they weren't designed to be, and they lose part of what makes them enjoyable in the process.

Mario Party was designed to be a 'party' game - one where the responses, reactions, and interplay of the people playing is a part of the intended overall experience. If you don't have a group to play it with, the experience is only a shadow of what it can be.

@nhSnork No offense, but I would suggest that if you mainly play alone, then you aren't Mario Party's target demographic, and no future MP game is likely to accommodate you.

This goes further for the whole article - the whole point of the game is the local multiplayer. Concessions made to different demographics are always just going to be that: concessions. If you don't have friends to play with, don't get it. It'd be like someone who hates competitive gaming complaining about a MOBA not catering to their tastes.

@The_ghostmen Of course it's Sony responding to Nintendo's success. Atari and Sega made these things since the early 2000s, and nobody followed suit because they simply weren't successful enough to be worth copying. The NES and SNES classics were, hence the Playstation classic in short order. I don't really see why that's a problem, though - half the industry is built on repeating or copying success.

IMO most of the PS1 era games have not aged well. Interested in the classic PS1 Squaresoft lineup, but I expect my most wanted games will be absent (Xenogears and Chrono Cross), and I already own basically every other PS1-era title I would want on another platform.

@kobashi100 And kids routinely and regularly bypass the Ps4 and Xbox protective mechanisms. I work in mental health, and I've seen enough clients struggling with related issues that I'd never allow my own children to play a Ps4 or Xbox online. I am happy to let them play the Switch because its security measures cannot be bypassed without them stealing my phone.

@LowKeyLoki The need to use a phone for the voice chat is obviously to stop children from using the voice chat. Given how easy it would be to implement voice chat within the Switch, the decision to tie it to a phone app is obviously deliberate.

@Arnold-Kage Given that Metroid has never sold over 3 million copies, and averages closer to 1.5 million, I doubt it. It'll be successful no doubt, but not in the same league as the likes of Smash, Mario etc.

It's not really a bad thing - just reflective of the reality that some IPs have broader appeal than others. Metroid was never going to be a system seller.

@Arnold-Kage Pretty much has to be. None of those titles except Animal Crossing and Pokemon are going to be able to score the same kind of sales experienced by Odyssey, Mario Kart, BOTW, Splatoon 2, and likely Smash individually.

Directs are always very YMMV. This one was underwhelming for me because, of the genuine surprises brought up, I was only really interested in Town, but I understand why so many people are excited. FF coming to the Switch is also nice, though I have played all the FF games in the past and am unsure if I'll double dip on anything (maybe FF9).

@LaytonPuzzle27 The best way of stopping the practice is not by voting with your wallet - the whole reason this is appearing in the courts is because gambling, and gambling like activities, are designed to be psychologically addictive. They're designed with the explicit purpose of trying to remove the aspect of choice from the consumer. That's why the practice is illegal in the first place.

Applying the 'golden rule' here is like saying a student who cheats on an exam should not fail because 'you would want someone to pass you anyway even if you cheated.'

@iLikeUrAttitude Because complaining about people enjoying things that you don't is immature and petty?

@SmaggTheSmug As others have said, you were likely playing it wrong, especially if you were using Great Sword. GS basically requires you to sheathe/ unsheathe to compensate for the weapon's poor mobility, and anticipate the monster's patterns to score charged hits.

The thing about traditional MoHu is the combat system is completely counterintuitive for anyone who's used to gaming. Demos have always been a terrible way to showcase the game, because the combat is always clunky and awkward until you've learned the point of it. A friend bought me 3U years ago. Spent the first 10 hunts flailing ineffectively until the system kinda clicked, and it wasn't until that point that I got into the game.

@Nincompoop

I really don't understand why or how it matters if a game is designed specifically for the system or not. Most AAA games released on the PS4 and the Xbox1 aren't 'designed' for them - they're designed with multi platform releases in mind. This is the reality of gaming in 2018. Unless you have a vested interest in the success of a platform, or are paid by its developer to deliberately withhold your product from competitors, it almost always makes more sense to release your game on everything that can possibly run it.

Aside from that, the Switch is little over a year old. You're seriously expecting a host of third parties to be able to produce quality offerings built from the ground up specifically for the system inside that time frame?

@Nincompoop Octopath is far from being the 'only non-indie 3rd party game' released in 2018. It isn't even the only 3rd party non-indie exclusive - and that's excluding remasters or remakes of 'old games,' of which there have admittedly been a tonne.

Some of the third party games release this year:

Sonic Mania
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate
Megaman 11
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Fortnite
Fifa 18
Ys VIII
Warriors Orochi 4
Happy Birthdays
Penny Punching Princess
Atelier Lydie and Suelle
Blade Strangers
Valkyria Chronicles 4
Fifa 19
Taiko No Tatsujin
Titan Quest
Disgaea 4 Complete
Wolfenstein 2
Paladins
One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
Dragon Quest Builders

Off the top of my head. If they're not your thing, that's fine, but you can't pretend they don't exist.

@OorWullie Past sales figures give a clear answer to your question: the casual audience provides a much bigger profit on a consistent basis. That is why, despite the immense fan demand for more Metroids, no Metroid title has ever broken 3 million sales, and the average Metroid title has struggled to sell as well as ARMS. This is why the F-Zero franchise has sold decently at best since the original title, and we haven't had a new installment in over a decade. This is why a large chunk of Nintendo's best seller list consists of titles made expressly for, and played almost exclusively by, casual gamers - Wii Sports Resort with 32 million sold, Wii Play with 28 million, Nintendogs with 24 million, Wii Fit with 22 million, Wii Fit Plus with 21 million, Brain Age with 20 million. Some of these titles have sold more copies than the entire Metroid and F-Zero franchise combined.

The sad fact for us, as hardcore gamers, is that we just aren't all that significant an audience. Casual gamers make up the bulk of hardware and software sales. They're always going to be the first people thought of when a new system launches. Hardcore games will come, but they'll only come later, when there are enough people who own the system to give them a fighting chance of turning a respectable profit.

We, the hardcore audience, aren't numerous enough OR rich enough to justify an effort to appease us.

@thesilverbrick From a business perspective, why on earth would Nintendo want to do that? It's not like the average (read: casual) gamer is going to be buying more than one or two titles a month. Nintendo might ship a small handful more Switches if they release a new F Zero or Metroid game closely following Smash and Pokemon, but only at the cost of thoroughly cannibalizing the sales that same F-Zero or Metroid would have been able to achieve if it had released in a quiet window, unopposed.

If they aren't hardcore, how many gamers do you seriously believe are going to pick up a Switch just for F-Zero or Metroid, who wouldn't already have picked up one for Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Smash, etc?

@Switch_will_fail

From the perspective of someone who loves both of them, they're honestly too different for one to be 'better' than the other. They scratch different itches.

@Sidon_ZoraPrince I agree. I play in the Japan region and after 37 matches, only experienced this kind of disruptive behaviour once. That's par the course for Splatoon, honestly.

The most popular team losing at the Splatfest is normal and expected at this point.

No thanks. Achievements are cheap attempts at psychological manipulation and the less of them we see the better.

Having played the original, for mine this is better than Ys, simply because there is far more content. I beat Ys in a little under 40 hours and had exhausted what it had to offer in 50, whereas SR clocked in at close to 70 by the time I'd run through what it had to offer. Despite being fairly archetypal, I also found the cast charming.

No two ways about it, if you don't like anime this game is absolutely not for you, but that much should be obvious from the briefest glimpse at any of its promotional material.

'But it isn't what -I- wanted!' - This comments section.

It's a $20 a year service. What do you seriously expect?

@code45709 I have loved Nintendo since my grandmother bought a NES when I was 4 years old, and I love all the series you've listed. Wave Race 64 and SF64 were my favorite N64 games - I spent an entire summer playing both - and I would love sequels to either and any of them.

That said, it wouldn't make any sense for Nintendo to release sequels to them -now-. It's too early in the Switch's life cycle and the games would be bound to underperform. I'm not a share holder, but if you want these franchises to continue into the future, then their next installments have to impress shareholders. This means being patient and waiting to release rather than throwing them out early at a time when they couldn't sell to their potential. I'm an adult man. I've had to learn patience.

@code45709 Honestly, why would they? Most of the series you mention have had, at best, one runaway success, decades old, with several more recent lukewarm performances. Star Fox broke 4 million copies with SF64, and the original Metroid Prime sold near 3 million copies, but both franchises have only had moderate success since then, over a decade ago. Wave Race and 1080 have only had a single success with their decades old original titles. These are franchises with extremely dedicated fanbases, but they are not franchises which can persuade people who do not already have a Nintendo system that they need to buy a Nintendo system. Nintendo has produced plenty of titles in this vein. They already know they're going to do well, but they're not going to sell systems. Ergo, DON'T sell them close to launch, when the install base is still growing. Sell them a few years in when the console is established and you can maximise sales.

If you want people to buy your console, instead, you release entries in franchises that are not only beloved, but which are proven massive sellers. This is exactly what Nintendo has done, releasing new entries in Zelda, Mario, Splatoon, Smash, Kirby, and Pokemon. The only mega franchise missing in the current crop is Animal Crossing.

@Rob3008 Because increasing output would cannibalize sales. The primary market struggles to buy a game a month - if Nintendo released any more, sales for individual titles would suffer and smaller third party studios would lose a significant incentive to release on or develop for the Switch.

100% handheld. I've never used the dock once in the 8+ months I've had my Switch. I have a good TV with surround system, but it just does not suit my preferences or my lifestyle.

I actually feel kinda sad, reading about the spirit of comradeship that surrounded the early championships, given the frequently toxic, exclusionary, and mean-spirited 'community' that surrounds all things competitive in the videogame world today. We used to be better than this, people.

This is absolutely going to be a system seller in Japan, but it really needs better promotion in the West.

@bluemage1989 ARMS and SS haven't measured up to Splatoon, true, but of all of Nintendo's franchises, only Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Smash, and Animal Crossing have actually managed higher sales than Splatoon - that's how successful it's been. That kind of success shouldn't be the yardstick by which we judge the success of other debut titles.

@Solomon_Rambling As a mental health researcher and practitioner, it is possible that the largest problem with mental health research is that mental health is not researchable using scientific methods. Attempts to differentiate 'evidence based' treatments from non-evidence based treatments have generally served only to separate those treatments with are more easily researchable from those that aren't. Trauma, in general, is very easy to study. Differences in the brain are observable, and impairment is localised around the traumatic incident such that there is a clear delineation between the subject's behaviour before and after the incident, and a clear goal for therapy. CBT with exposure techniques for trauma is very easy to study because it is clearly structured, can be administered individually at any point after the traumatic event, and is focusing on a specific and single incident. Critical incident stress debriefing is much, much harder to study, since it requires a group of bystanders with the same level of exposure to be assembled -immediately- after a traumatic incident has occured. Person-centered therapy for depression is magnitudes harder to study than either, since it is open-ended, holistic, and heavily dependent on the personality of the therapist. All the same, the most replicated finding in mental health is widely known as the 'dodo verdict.' This basically means that all forms of therapy are largely equally efficacious provided the practitioner is liked by the patient, believes in his or her methods, and is consistent with their application.

With the vast majority of other mental health conditions, there is nothing objective to observe. Depression is widely thought to be related to serotonin imbalance (though even this is controversial and extremely under-researched), but no study has ever demonstrated how, if at all, a depressed person's brain chemistry differs from a healthy person's, or even how that depressed person's chemistry differs before and after suffering and recovering from depression.

In general, we assess mental health based on patients' reports of their level of impairment, which is obviously subjective and which changes dramatically with normal life change. I have seen patients, for example, who ran the gamut of talk and drug therapy, tried everything under the sun, and made no improvement, only to have large scale lifestyle change forced upon them and suddenly find they were 100% improved. This also presents a secondary problem: mental health is implicitly socially normative, which means people can be perfectly happy but still 'ill' because their behavior does not conform to social expectations of them. ADHD falls under this heading. So does antisocial personality disorder and, to an extent, avoidant personality disorder. This is partially why stigmitization exists - a large chunk of mental health disorders can be summarized as 'they can't behave the way society wants.'

Unfortunately, though, that is how it has to be because the alternative is leaving people like my patients bereft of any kind of effective help. No research means no funding - studies like the WHO study are imperative, despite possible stigmitization, to ensure that the outliers are able to grab onto something when they feel the need to reach out. Is it really worthwhile for someone who is actually killing himself due to his gaming addiction to wind up actually ruining his life just so casual gamers can engage in their hobby without fear of being told that playing too much is bad for them?

@Stocksy As a mental health professional, this comment, and the whole article, is so out of touch it isn't funny. Video game addiction, like other kinds of psychological addiction, is not about time spent - it's about impaired functionality. I've treated people who have dropped out of school, cut off all social contact with friends and family, stopped eating, and lost all sense of direction in life because of their gaming. In several cases related to an MMO that came out a few years ago, patients stopped sleeping in order to keep up with boss respawns, getting by with an hour or two a night for months on end and became ill enough to require hospitalisation. Many of these, and others I have treated, came of their own volition and without prompting from friends or family because they could feel their lives going off the rails but simply could not stop themselves.

These are not 'normal' gamers, but their condition is severe and debilitating enough, and alien enough to other existing mental health paradigms, that it would simply be irresponsible and harmful to pretend that they could be grouped under the umbrella of other existing disorders and treated -without- reference to problematic gaming.

The same is true of pornography, which you helpfully mention. Regular use isn't the problem. The problem is that a small subset of users use to such an extent that they find themselves significantly impaired in other areas of their lives - generally, in intimate relationships.

THAT is the pattern of behavior that the WHO is trying to address, not people spending a lot of time gaming.

@NEStalgia This I agree with, and it was a little bemusing to watch. The fact that so many people are bemoaning the 'lack of Switch games' despite how ludicrously packed the calender is is concerning, and is something Nintendo really should address.

@thesilverbrick People will actually pay more for inferior Switch ports of games available for other consoles simply because they're portable, and it's a very, very big deal for a large chunk of gamers.

@moroboshi Mario Tennis Aces is due out this month, Captain Toad is still forthcoming and Pokemon was announced alongside Mario Party and Smash. That's 4 Nintendo titles, 3 of them being entirely new, within a 6 month time span, and two of them being entries in franchises which are regular 10+ million sellers. For the system itself, add: Mega Man 11, Wolfenstein, Dark Souls, Dragon Ball Fighters, Octopath Traveller, Captain Toad, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Ark Survival, Disgaea 1 Complete, Crash Bandicoot, Okami HD, Banner Saga 3, Little Dragon Cafe, and Shining Resonance Refrain, among others.

If none of those games are for you because your interests lie in a different genre of gaming, that's fine, but it's disingenuous to pretend that there aren't games.

@Bolt_Strike When a new system is coming off the back of a system which suffered from a constant dearth of new titles, no, there is absolutely a need to demonstrate long-term support. This is simply no longer the case, as for the casual, the line up is -not- sparse. The casual plays games a few hours a week. They purchase a game a month because it's what they can both afford and afford the time for. They have a fairly significant line up already available to play, and if those titles have already been completed or are not of interest, they also have Fortnite and Hollow Knight just releasing, in addition to Mario Tennis, Mario Party, Mega Man 11, Pokemon, Smash, Wolfenstein, Dark Souls, Dragon Ball Fighters, Octopath Traveller, Captain Toad, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Ark Survival, Disgaea 1 Complete, Crash Bandicoot, Okami HD, Banner Saga 3, Little Dragon Cafe, and Shining Resonance Refrain all releasing in the next 6 months. This is in addition to the usual raft of indies and surprise titles.

That isn't a drought, and if you think it is the issue isn't the lack of games, but your lack of interest in them.

@Dethmunk IMO it's more about dev time. The Switch is only a year and a half old - most of the games that non-indie companies are releasing this year were in development before it was even a rumour.

@SnackBox From a business point of view, the -main- concerns about Nintendo currently revolve around their online infrastructure, which was not shown off at E3, and their unwillingness to capitalise on the veritable gold mine that is mobile gaming. As an investor (not as a gamer), the only thing that would have gotten me really excited about Nintendo at this E3 would have been 'Pokemon/ Mario/ Kirby/ etc Gacha-game coming out' in tandem with some more details about its online service.

As a gamer, my wish list is very different, but if I were an investor I'd definitely be disappointed right now.

@Ralek85 If Fire Emblem is a franchise primarily for 'core' fans then so is Metroid Prime - sales for the last two iterations of FE have topped any Metroid game since the original Prime, and the series has been heavily buoyed by the popularity of the mobile title.

Honestly, why is everyone so convinced that Metroid is some kind of killer app? The series has always been strong, but it's never been a system seller for Nintendo.

@FTL I actually agree, and don't think the Direct was excellent by any means, but I am a long-term Nintendo fan and I prefer seeing far into the future because I know I am going to be around to live it. Nintendo's core demographic for its Direct announcements isn't people like me - it's people who need the push to get into the system right now.

@electrolite77 2019 is within a 9 month time span, which Nintendo has regularly indicated is their time frame for announcing games.

On the general topic of share prices: as an investor, I want almost the opposite from Nintendo that I want as a fan - I want them to demonstrate a serious and continued dedication to mobile titles and a willingness to embrace microtransactions as a -much- more cost effective and optimal way of turning a profit. I want more Fire Emblem Heroes-style gacha-ing at the expense of AAA titles. I want them to follow Konami's lead and diversify into slot machines, and I'm -really- interested in their cancelled Quality of Life project being re-opened.

As a gamer, I want none of that. But that's not relevant here, because this article isn't about what gamers want. It's about what investors want. Anyone who thinks the two things are the same is really deluded.

@matii A sequel in a series in the top 5 sales for the last 3 Nintendo home consoles isn't big enough?

@Bolt_Strike A previous interview already addressed this point. The Switch was new hardware so they broke their usual rule as a means of demonstrating a long term future.

@HappyRusevDay F-Zero is a series which has been producing diminishing returns since it's first entry. Despite fan outcry, the reality is that the average consumer simply isn't interested, and while Nintendo has funded such projects in the past regardless, no investor in their right mind is going to flag a bright future for the company on the basis of a new F-Zero game.

The same goes for Metroid Prime 4. Metroid simply isn't a system seller - it's a solid, strong franchise, but it isn't in the same ballpark as Smash, whose worst selling entry has sold twice as many copies as Metroid's best selling entry. You think that releasing a trailer for a 2 million (at best) seller is suddenly going to convince investors that the company is on track to make a huge profit, when the announcement of a 10+ million seller didn't?

@moroboshi Microsoft and Sony showed titles that aren't expected to release until 2019 or beyond. Nintendo's entire presentation was focused on the next few months. Again, they've figured that casual gamers don't buy consoles for the promise of titles in 24 months, so they haven't bothered showcasing any.

@LUIGITORNADO I suspect the answer is that it simply doesn't fit in with their business strategy. The reality is in this day and age, the average consumer (not the hardcore gamer) does not buy a new console in anticipation of a product that won't come out for 12-18 months. They buy consoles with the promise of immediate or near immediate gratification. Nintendo knows this, and their strategy has consequently been to only show off titles that are close to release. If we're disappointed in E3, it's because we expected Nintendo to treat it as everyone else has been, when to them, it's obvious that all it was ever intended to be was another Direct, no more or less significant than any that came before it.

@AlphaElite - This perspective kinda bemuses me. Why on earth would Nintendo want to cannibalise their own game sales by releasing all of their titles at once? As is, in the 6 months we have left of this year, we are expecting 5 new titles (Pokemon, Smash, Mario Tennis, Mario Party, and Fire Emblem) and 1 port (Captain Toad), as well as sizeable DLC for two other titles (Xenoblade 2 and Splatoon 2), in addition to fairly large third party titles (Fortnite, Overcooked 2, Starlink, etc). The average (and this means casual) gamer can't afford (either in terms of money or in terms of time) much more than a single title a month. What would Nintendo gain by pushing production of Metroid, Yoshi etc to make the 2018 window?

@Fandabidozi - The problem with in-game difficulty is unfortunately hardwired into Pokemon's battle system. Since Speed is an absolute vs relative advantage in Pokemon, and one to two hit KOs are the norm when type advantage is factored in, it's essentially impossible to create an in-game quest which is challenging while still allowing for the growth of the player's team. If you 'scale' the enemy to meet the player, it just invalidates 90% of the collectible roster, which is contrary to the spirit of the games, while still allowing for easily exploitable game-winning strategies that require the computer to play like a pro to overcome (which would render the game inaccessible to newcomers).

Perhaps even more essentially, on a 'competitive' level, the game is essentially built for 2 v 2. Moves, Pokemon, abilities, etc are all balanced for 2 v 2, and it's also the form of the game which provides you with the greatest outlet to come up with quirky teams with creative win conditions (e.g: making your Shedinja unkillable). The problem? The in-game quest almost entirely limits you to 1 v 1, thereby providing new players with zero experience in how to play the game against other players.

@Fandabidozi - It depends which version you're playing. In X and Y you had the reset bag, which you could get by doing Super training. In Sun and Moon that's gone, and you feed your Pokemon EV lowering berries instead. For Speed, you want Tomato berries, which grow on Route 10.

@chiptoon As I understand it this is a sequel to the ps4 game.

@DarkKirby 'They're not fun' is your opinion and is not shared by the fairly sizeable community of breeders, whose main interest in the games is perfecting IVs. Some of them have commented to that effect in this thread.

As I posted above, they're not necessary either if your objective is competition, and 'they lead people to cheat' is also an argument against having single copies of legendaries, rare shiny Pokémon, and version exclusives. Many, many people cheat because cheating is easy. They would no matter how much you simplify the game systems, because it'd still be easier to cheat than to spend time leveling, or hunting for Pokémon in the first place.

@bratzdoll As a former competitive Pokemon player, I can assure you that minmaxing your team of six Pokemon simply isn't necessary unless you plan on trying to become an elite player (which the majority of the online community is not, has never been, and will never be). With a passing knowledge of EVs, which became ludicrously easy to train as of Pokemon X and Y, the difference between a perfect Pokemon and the absolute worst Pokemon possible is 31 points in every stat. Since somehow catching or breeding the absolute worst Pokemon is statistically as unlikely as getting the best one, the actual difference between a minmaxed Pokemon and one that just haphazardly weight trained for a half hour is unlikely to be more than 10-20 points. This is significant, but it is only an insurmountable difference in high level play, and it's disingenuous to state that it's necessary to stand any kind of chance in online play.

I know this because, since Ruby and Sapphire, I've practiced on online simulators against teams which were all minmaxed -by default- using suboptimal spreads based on my in-game teams (which I never had the time to optimise), and still maintained a good winning percentage in the realm of 80%. My teams have also never been conventional, since I insist on including at least two of my all-time favorite Pokemon (Hawlucha, Breloom, and Pangoro) on every team I build. I have also maintained above 50% winning percentages with teams composed entirely of fighting Pokemon (my favorite type).

Competitive Pokemon is a mess for various reasons, and really needs a major revamp (the whole battle system does, honestly), but it really does not take nearly as much preparation to be able to jump in as people imagine.

@DarkKirby

Of course there is a point. Pokemon is about capturing, training, and breeding monsters, and IRL, and in Pokemon's lore, no two creatures are created equal. When you go fishing, you occasionally catch small and big fish of the same species. When you breed horses, you sometimes breed horses that are stronger and faster. Accounting for and -cultivating- variations in strength, speed, intelligence, personal characteristics, etc are an integral part of the world of animal training, be it dog shows, shepherding contests, horse races, etc. IVs and EVs simulate that in an -extremely- simplified and more easily controllable manner.

Is it complicated? Yes, it is. Does it alienate casual players? Well no, not at all, since there is absolutely zero need to gain an awareness of those particular mechanics in the course of playing the game. More, there are individuals who get into the games specifically because of that complexity (people who breed for perfect natures, IVs etc) - some have already posted in this comments section.

The state of the competitive game is IMO a bigger concern, because it's frankly a mess.

The 3DS version didn't impress me much. It was fun, but the game didn't have that much to do, and the character roster was so unbalanced that most of the characters you unlocked weren't worth using. The graphics seem much, much improved in this version, but that was never really a big deal for me in the original - if they give us more to do I might pick it up, but it's a pass for me otherwise.

Several points I don't agree with:

1. 'A strong, engaging story is always a good thing' - I hear this all the time from videogame publications and essayists, but it simply isn't true. A strong and engaging story is a good thing for hardcore gamers, but not casual ones. Engaging stories require your time and attention - that is practically the definition of being 'engaging' - but this comes at the expense of accessibility, simply because it isolates gamers for whom games are diversions and not serious hobbies. Gamers who play five minutes here, 10 minutes there, between all the other things going on in their lives. There are many people who won't touch the Last of Us, God of War, Final Fantasy etc simply -because- their strong stories demand more attention than they feel games warrant - Pokemon Go was made for people like that.

2. Simplicity - This has never really been a problem for the main Pokemon games because any and all complexity is utterly superfluous to those who are only interested in beating the game and/or catching them all. EVs and IVs only matter if you are playing Pokemon competitively - the in-game quest can be beaten ably even by a Pokemon with 0 EVs and 0 IVs in every stat. To date, I have never seen anyone try Pokemon and reject the game -because it's too complex-.

3. Events - I agree that this would be a good idea a la Splatoon 2, but anyone announcing the 'death' of Pokemon due to a decrease in an active playerbase kinda misses the point of the games. The games were never really designed to keep people playing indefinitely - they are more traditional JRPGs than MMOs or competitive games. You're supposed to play Pokemon for a while then -finish- it and put it down until the next Pokemon comes along.

@marnelljm

It's a simple difference of preference. I'm an older gamer with a busy mobile life - the average kind in Japan. I was given GOW by a friend and it failed to engage me after a couple of hours, after which I abandoned it and went back to playing Splatoon 2 in breaks between my clients. I suspect that, like Nier Automata, which I also bought at launch, the game is never going to hold my interest and it'll remain unfinished. If I want story I'll watch a movie, which will present more in less time.

Labo, on the other hand, I'm interested in and would buy but for tight finances this month, simply because it's different and seems like it'd be fun to tinker with.

In my circle of acquaintances, nobody has bought either Labo or GOW. There's been some interest in Labo but the price has been a deterrent, and nobody has even wanted to borrow my copt of GOW.

Different stripes for different people at different stages of life.