Not to poke the hornet's nest that is p*kem*n today but I suspect part of what makes gamers SO MAD when a new game in a series doesn't seem to live up to the previous one is the intentional lack of backwards compatibility.

if FOOBAR 4 was good and then FOOBAR 5 comes out and it's seen as lackluster, well you can just keep playing FOOBAR 4, right?

but in a world where the hardware changes out from under the games every 1-2 releases, you can only do that if you still have the previous game's hardware in working condition.

like, I may have bought Pkmom Blue back in 1998, but does my 3DS support it? Does my Switch? No.
Although they might sell me an emulated re-release or HD version

So you're in this kind of bind where you could easily get very emotionally invested in the new one being GREAT because you want to play this series but you can't play the old ones anymore.

because they're on hardware you don't have anymore, either because you traded it in for the new one, it broke and you tossed it, or you passed it down to a younger sibling or friend.

and don't get me wrong, that's not just a technical limitation: that's an intentional business decision. One problem every sequel faces is the "internal competition" of the earlier games in the series.

if you made a great game FOOBAR 6 and everyone bought and loved it and you quickly come out with FOOBAR 7, your main competitor might not be some other companies game BAZQUX 2, but your own FOOBAR 6.

and what's worse for you is that every already-sold copy of FOOBAR 6 is a copy that's being played but you're making no money from. People are continuing to play them "for free", or buying used copies from ebay or gamestop and you get 0$ for that.

So you've got the perverse incentive to prevent your previous games from being easily playable, so that you don't have to compete with them anymore.

so this sort of thing drives a lot of business decisions like limited backwards compatibility, not patching older games to work on newer OSes, and the shutting down of online servers.

And most of the bad effects that has have been talked about before:
it makes it hard or impossible to play games you already bought, it makes it more expensive to maintain the ability to play them, and it causes games to be lost.

like Wikipedia has a list of 204 (!) inactive MMOs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inactive_massively_multiplayer_online_games

some of those got server emulators and such, and can still be played in some manner... but most can't. They're just gone, like every disc of the game was snapped in half.

but I've not seen anyone remark on how this might be having side-effects on the "gamer culture" around new games and the anger when they're disappointing or broken

and that's interesting. It's not just disappointment, really.
People aren't going "aww, I was hoping the new FOOBAR 8would be great! the previews looked good. Eh, maybe the HD rerelease will fix it, or I'll wait for FOOBAR 9"

no: they are ANGRY.
And I'm not saying it's "wrong" to be angry at a new game (though please don't abuse the fucking developers, alright?)
but it's interesting that people are that invested.

especially in a series that has this many games.
I mean, there was a main series release on 3DS in 2017, and a gen1 remakeish game in 2018, on the same console as this new one.

there's an ongoing and active free-to-play mobile game, and a second free-to-play mobile game (FOOBAR Quest) on this system and Android/iOS.

So it's not like there aren't alternatives to fall back on. Those games are probably similar to the new one in a lot of ways, and you can get them for half price on ebay or 2$ off at gamestop.

So it's interesting that there's such a response of THIS MAKES ME ANGRY instead of "oh well, I'll play some LASTGAME instead and wait for the inevitable sequel and/or HD remake"

it's especially interesting in light of the fact that we've long since left the world where a game comes out 100% done and set in stone when the cartridge/CD/DVD comes out on release day. No, every console and handheld has internet access now with automatic game updates.

so if a game comes out and it's somehow broken... guess what?
They can fix that. They probably will!

I will say that to some extent it's probably the whole social media algorithmic timeline cycle. People are going to talk about a thing, it trends, other content creators talk about it, it trends harder.

if the internet tells you that people are talking about how FOOBAR 7 IS BAD you're probably going to prioritize that FOOBAR 7 IS BROKEN video/article/tweet you were thinking about doing

BTW, a side note as an amateur games historian: These updates are going to be the biggest casualty of the modern era.

in 2027 you're going to go dig out your dusty Nintendo Switch and find your copy of FOOBAR 9 and it'll work just fine... but the update server will have been shut down, and you'll be stuck with the launch version, not the later patched version with bugfixes.

if you're really lucky, there'll be a thriving piracy scene that saved a copy of that game with the latest versions of the updates, but if it's a less popular game... that'll be tricky.

and of course you'll have to figure out some way to side-load those updates onto the system. It might be easier to use a Switch emulator or flash cart/mod chip, and at that point the list of people who can easily play their switch games has greatly decreased.

which'll definitely help sell the HD remakes/Virtual Console versions on the Nintendo-Playstation GameOrb 360.

ANYWAY, I'd like to say again: The point of this thread isn't to say it's wrong to get mad if a game is bad, or that it's okay that a game is bad (if it is: I've not played it)

But don't abuse the devs. That's neither nice nor helpful.

And that includes QA: I've seen some people say things like "DID THEY EVEN TEST THIS?". Yes, yes they did. They tested it a lot and then decided which bugs they had time to fix, based on which were most important.

and my point was to wonder on if the enforced-obsolescence cycle is making gamers put greater importance on this one particular game being great.
Is that making people angrier? I think so.

and I don't think that side-effect of the obsolescence cycle has been remarked on much.

although I now realize one part I was missing out on is that these are very social games. Not just online stuff like posting memes and screenshots, but you can trade with other players, battle them, etc.

which makes the experience of playing FOOBAR 4 a decade after release a massively different experience than to playing it when it's released, because now far fewer are playing it, and you don't get that social aspect.

and probably that ties into a sort of fear-of-missing-out anxiety, regarding missing the community.
If you decide to just wait until the eventual patches fix some of the problems, you miss out on the community that develops early on.

which is going to make you put more importance on the game being great from day one, because you're in the FOOBAR community, have friends you know from the FOOBAR discords and tumblrs and such, and it makes it harder to decide to just opt-out of a game generation