Most of the major franchises have kind of been played already and we don't see the volume of retail games we once did. But yeah, the line up is pretty soft as of right now. I do think Ni No Kuni 2 is gonna perform pretty solid though.
It's part and parcel with increased development times, and there's a bit of an unspoken other issue with a lot of the big hitters last year: they were belated by multiple years already.
We've exhausted major titles for this gen and I don't expect new entries for some time thereafter, but at the same time we're not seeing many new franchise to fill in the gaps, Splatoon's our biggest growth for the entire gen and then Persona 5, and that says a lot.
We're now starting to see some major movements from western devs for new IP but, aside from Ubi, its taken years to reach this point.
How the hell is it nonsense? Those are literally the two biggest third party franchises in Japan, all they need it a little bit of stuff in between.
One is shared with the 3DS, and later the Switch, and other from historical numbers has never performed well on console. You take things out of context far too much to make a point that is at its core built on assumptions with no basis in reality.
Having no major software/light software line for potentially upwards of eight months is terrible. It doesn't matter what bookends a long decline in software, the decline is never good.