Palworld has broken Counter-Strike's all-time concurrent players peak at 1.8 million, and is now #2 most played game on Steam ever. It is only behind PUBG which holds the record at 3.2 million.
Why would they? It takes effort to make something innovative. They can make buckets of money by doing nothing. They might make more, but it's going to cost a lot more too.
Pokemon Arceus had a little innovation. The thing is: a little innovation after decades of doing the same thing is like a textbook example of "too little, too late".
Not even remotely the same level of empty. In Palworld there's 10-100x times the density of creatures and resources. Plus Palworld just looks better than Pokemon Arceus and also doesn't resort to fog to hide things popping into existence
I don't think that GameFreak will see this as a wake up call. And even if it does, it might not do the necessary changes to Pokémon main series.
The stagnation runs deeper. It is partially caused by inertia ("we're selling well, why bother innovating?"), but also by GF's insistence on making the main series story-driven instead of gameplay-driven. Even if story-driven Pokémon goes a lot against the franchise's biggest strength - a wide, unique, and immersive universe to explore.
Omg I'm an idiot, I completely misread what they were saying, I thought they were saying gf needed to focus more on story and the gameplay being stagnant doesn't help. I'll chalk that up to morning brain.
There's no Rotom bossing you around. No "sit down you player, as we tell you what's supposed to be your story". No unnecessary broken bridges forcing story linearity. The story that you see in this sort of game is the one that you build as you interact with the game, not the one that the developer wants you to watch.
More importantly: The Pokemon Company is a separate entity from Game Freak and Nintendo, with a third company also participating, Creatures Inc.
Pokemon games exist solely to drive people, especially the current younger generation, into the franchise. Licensed merchandise is THE money printer for them. In 2022, they reported 11.6 billion dollars in revenue just from that. They're at a point where they can literally ask "Why even bother with games?"
People like cathing cool animals and do thing with them valling it a pokemon like game is just weird. No one called pokemon final fantasy with animals.