I kinda agree with what's been said many pages ago, the franchise hasn't lost direction, we're just not the target demographic anymore.
I bet if you gave a seven year old a copy of X or Y, they'd still get the same enjoyment that I did when I played Yellow.
I suppose the face that we've grown up has sort of isolated us. Instead of everyone around us playing the games, we end up on our own, or going online to find people who share the interest.
Trading a Pidgey for a Ekans meant a whole lot more when you were trading with an IRL friend than it does with a stranger on the internet.
That being said, perhaps GameFreak or whoever could do more to cater for us older fans.
In XY, I really enjoyed the Looker quests and postgame content, far more than I had in previous generations. It's just a shame that I managed to get through them all in an hour or two, and now I can't replay them without starting over or paying another £40 for the other version of the game.
Personally, I'd like there to be more replayability in the games. If I decided to drop all my lv100s in my PC, and start over with new things, I could still fight all the gyms again, and beat the crap out of challenge all the youngsters and bug catchers again.
Thinking about it, I'm not sure why they haven't ever implemented infinite gym rematches. We can do the elite four over and over to farm money and exp, but why can't we do the same with the gyms?
I really only decided to get into competitive breeding/battling because I'd pretty much 100%ed the game, I've "caught 'em all" and thoroughly beaten all the trainers in Kalos, but still want more.
Without meaning to offend the competitive community, I'd prefer there be more stuff I can do in single player rather than having to socialise with other humans.
I'm not too sure that all those horrific looking pokemon (looking at you Aromatisse) are really such a bad thing, I -will- try to catch each one, no matter how bad it looks or performs, but I'll still end up playing with my old favorites.
I guess it's just up to what you want out of the game, be it the story, collecting, or battling.
I'm currently watching the whole anime from the start, I watched the first season or two as a kid, but was never really "into" watching TV religiously, so didn't really care about missing an episode or four, there was always someone at school who'd fill me on on what happened (or not as the case may be.)
Now (I'm on the second season of Black/White) I just seem to be shouting at my PC about how Ash introduces Pikachu and says where he's from EVERY DAMN TIME (nobody cares Ash, just stop already), and getting annoyed that he never evolves his pokemon until right near the end of a season before leaving them with a professor forever.
Of course, this is against because I'm not the target audience, and I bet a seven year old would enjoy it a lot more than I do.
Like so many others here, I too collected the old trading cards (almost completed the first three sets :D ) but because none of my friends were really into them, the only person I had to play against was my mum, so I never got much of a chance to -play- the game.
I got more into playing YuGiOh and MTG (call me a heretic if you will) since I could actually play those against my friends, but my local gaming shop still holds regular pokemon tournaments, and a lot of people seem really into them, just not me.
In all honesty, the franchise seems to be a fantastic money making machine.
Yeah, the genwunners and die hard fans will still complain about the new games, but I bet they'll all still buy them, name a franchise where that doesn't happen. The kids will still collect the trading cards, and as long as the anime is on TV, people will watch it.
It hasn't lost it's way, we've just grown outgrown it.