The only one that "counts" for me is Colosseum/XD, since the others doesn't uses main series mechanics. But every main generation starts with a game that follows the formula.
Precisely the issue no? The poster wants to deviate from the formula, which spin off games do.
Funnily enough, I'm curious as to what franchises people are playing that throw a knife in their formula every iteration more than pokemon does. All Street Fighter games are essentially the same fighting game. All Dragon Quests are essentially the same rpg. Etc.. This is precisely why games have the same name, because you expect the same thing with new content.
This is all about marketing. These "branches" doesn't have an Anime to promote the game, or new pokémon.
Marketing affects sales, not critical acclaim. Also to say that spin off's can't grow would be wrong. Look at the mystery dungeon series. When it started out it was just one of the 100 spin offs with the same marketing of one, and is now a near core title for The Pokemon Company.
Pokémon Colosseum had a very bad marketing strategy compared to main games. And it still has SEVERAL bad points (the game is VERY slow, has very few pokémon options early in game, amoung others).
If a game needs a great marketing strategy to be considered good...well there's your issue. If people looked back on colosseum the way they do Super Mario Sunshine/Wind Waker/etc. i.e. games that had an initial rocky reception/marketing but are now considered classics, you'd have a point.
But no one outside of die-hard pokemon fans, considers the series a classic. It deviating from the formula killed the game, and the only reason it was fun at all was ironically enough, the tried and true pokemon battle system.
The main pokémon public are chids that just want new pokémon and forms. They don't care about battle tournaments, IVs, EVs and another things that gamers value.
Not anymore. Ever since Gen.5 there's about an equal amount of kids to adults ratio in the audience, and it's slanting more towards adults each iteration. ORAS actually had more adult players than otherwise.
And the second statement is a flat out lie for so many reasons. For starters, I'm an adult, and I don't "value" any of those stats. I play to see the new pokemon/story/region/etc., and I know there are many more that think the same way.
Secondly, to say Gamefreak doesn't care about competitive is a joke. There's a reason pokemon's competitive is essentially the largest competitive gaming community in the world. Every generation they introduce tons of new abilities/moves/pokemon/items to shake up what's there. Could it be balanced better? Yes. Could every other competitive game ever, be balanced better? Yes.
Anyways, I'll cut my end of the discussion off here. The debate has nothing to do with the OP anymore.
