I don't know, why do people buy new iterations of GTA, Need for Speed, or Call of Duty?
At the end of the day, a lot of people really enjoy the formula of the Pokémon games. Mechanically they're pretty solid and surprisingly deep if you're looking for that. On top of that the world of the Pokémon games is a really enjoyable one, in later games they've done a fantastic job of wold building. Some people just enjoy collecting cute little animals that beat the shit out of each other, there's like 700 now and the balance between them tends to change pretty significantly between games.
Game Freak have done a really good job at iterating on the core gameplay of the Pokémon games in such a way that every one of those three kinds of people will find something new and interesting in each instalment. Each game brings with it new Pokémon and regions that keep the collectors and sightseers happy. On top of that the actual mechanics of battling Pokémon have evolved pretty significantly over time. Gen V introduced new battle formats (triple and rotation battles), seasons which affected the outcome of moves, as well as making TMs (technical machines) significantly more useful by making them no longer single use items. That last one is important as it means you can experiment with new move sets with a much smaller penalty than in previous games.
The changes in Pokémon games tend to be more iterative than revolutionary, but there's still a large demographic that's totally satisfied by that. On top of that, there's always new players coming into the franchise. Game Freak does a masterful job of appealing to both of those demographics and disregarding pretty much everyone else.
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