Pokemon Direct tomorrow at 6AM PST (7 minutes, Gen 8?)

As I said in my previous post, I'm not asking much, I'm not looking for a Pokemon open-world game, not on Monster Hunter's level mind you. I will say this.

I want Gen 8 to be far less hand-holding and more freedom just to walk around and stuff. Bring back the jackass rivals and that's about it. Not like I'm asking GameFreak to do much but I'm okay whatever we'll end up with, just more freedom is all I ask & the jackass rival attitude.

@FireEmblem_Man: Lol, that's proof right there that Game freak can't please everybody.

Of course the games are important. They're still the heart of the franchise, as all the other media and merchandise are based on the games. Whenever a new game launches, it's followed-up with a new anime season, anime movie, set of cards, line of toys, manga chapters, new books, etc. That's why I said the games serve as the launching pad for all the other stuff in the franchise. Pokemon Go had a similar effect, and Detective Pikachu will likely have a similar effect as well. But ultimately, it's the core mainline games that are the driving force of the franchise. In that sense, they're the most important part of the franchise, even if they account for only a small fraction of the overall revenue, since the rest of the franchise is dependent upon them.

Star Wars follows a similar business model in the sense that the movies serve as a launching pad for a slew of other media and merchandise, the same way the games do for Pokemon. There was a big Star Wars boom after The Force Awakens released, and continued with Rogue One, before the franchise ultimately stumbled with The Last Jedi, which turned out to be a risky move that alienated a large part of its core fanbase. It may not be in Pokemon's best interests to take a similar risk that could potentially alienate a large part of its core fanbase. Maybe because Pokemon plays it relatively safe, it hasn't declined like Star Wars has in recent years.