This probably doesn't count as an opinion, and might be more of a fact than anything. But I might as well bring it up.


It seems like every other franchise that tried to compete against Pokémon (like Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, Yo Kai Watch, etc), just ended up dying in obscurity, or just straight up flopped, at least in North America. Let's start with Digimon. Before I started seeing @Gomamon talk about it, I had not heard anything about Digimon in many years, (maybe around the mid-2000s). In fact I recall a friend of mine even saying that Digimon sucked and it was a Pokemon rip off. Now I know for a fact Yo Kai Watch is a dead franchise, at least in America. The franchise had a pretty good start at first, and then it rapidly declined to the point, that the anime no longer airs in America, the toyline has been since discontinued, and the company who started the franchise, Level-5, shut down their American operations a few years back. I believe the reason for Yo-kai Watch's failure was the massive popularity Pokemon was achieving thanks to the Pokemon Go app, its just like people were losing interest. And it was marketed poorly, with its commercials relying on childish humor, and trying to be hip and cool with the kids, based on what I've seen.

I could be wrong on all of this, so feel free to correct me if I made a mistake or a poor observation on this.