Sadly I think you're right, because of an example of this, Dragon Warrior Monsters vs Pokemon. Dragon Warrior Monsters and Pokemon released around the same time. Now Pokemon (red and blue) was and is a great game, worthy of all praise, don't get me wrong. But dragon warrior Monsters was equally as good, if not better. Seriously, if you haven't played it, it's like Pokemon, but better. And yet, it sold idk the numbers, maybe like 1/10th what Pokemon sold, if that. And the reason why is, like you said, the marketing. DWM was the weird one, box art did it no favors, the game was quirky and you're throwing meat and monsters and breeding them and stuff, you're in a tree, you're going into portals...not easy to market, I don't envy square enix on figuring out how, I'm just glad they brought the game over to us English speakers...Pokemon meanwhile was a slam dunk home run from the start, it came with anime cartoon show after school, it soon had toys and cards and stuff, it had cute creatures like Pikachu but also ones like Charizard and Blastoise. The game systems were simple, get a Pokemon, battle Pokemon, use PokeBall and capture, travel towns and defeat gym leaders. Brilliant. And yet, there's another game, that's just as good if not better, right there launching at basically the same time, but you didn't know. Didn't pick it up. Pokemon was what you wanted. And Pokemon is what you got. But I'm telling you. Dragon Warrior Monsters, it's where it's at. Deserves way more love than it got. Play it on an emulator on your tablet or something, you may want to play it at 2-4x speed at some point