>>714070613
>Why did Pokken fail?

As someone who plays competitively: it didn't, it's probably sold 3-4m units across both releases, still has active matchmaking on Switch, and while the scene is small, it's more active then a lot of other more niche FGC scenes that are older then a few years: Pokken's community is more active then something like Blazblue Crosstag, for example

What you're really asking is "why wasn't it as big as other Pokemon games?" which is because it's a fighting game, or "why wasn't it a huge hit and a massive FGC scene", which comes down to a few things: It was marketed as a casual arena fighter so a lot of the FGC dismissed it. The Evo 2016 showing also kinda sucked since the scene didn't understand the game well yet, and the fact it was exclusive to Nintendo consoles (which most locals don't have) and required two consoles, copies of the game, displays, and LAN adapters to run even a single setup was also an obstacle

TPCI also stopped supporting third party majors/regionals a year after the WiiU release, the Pokemon Worlds Pokken streams got segregated to it's own separate Twitch channel rather then the main Pokemon one. The added Arcade characters and patches also were never released on WiiU to be held back for switch which made it seem like the game was being abandoned

It should have been marketed as a competitive title from the start instead of misleadingly as an arena fighter (hell even in game the tutorial and movelist doesn't mention a lot of systems/mechanics: It's like they were worried admitting it had depth would scare casuals off), TPCI should have invested more in supporting third party events, and I think they should have tried to have some Pokemon Stadium style minigames to give it replay value for casuals and in a party setting, which also could have been used to teach combo timing, responding to mixups, making punishes etc since stadium minigames already deal with precise timing, pattern recognition, reaction speed, etc