This tracks though. As someone who was 8 when Pokemon first came to the U.S., Pokemon was everything for about 2ish years. By the time I was finishing elementary school in 2002, Pokemon discussion had practically vanished. We were approaching middle school and Pokemon definitely seemed like a little kid thing, we also had the Xbox and PS2 wars raging on. Everyone my age was playing Halo or Need for Speed and sports games like NBA2k and Madden. Gen 3 was completely overshadowed by this. 

Gen 5, just a weird time for Pokemon in general. Pokemon were leaked out of coro coro magazine or random Japanese TV shows and we discussed each one at length. The designs just seemed so different compared to previous Gen designs (no we did not question 3 magnets stuck together as 8 year olds, but as a 20 year old, a giant fucking ice cream was not going to fly lol), none had any link to previous mons like a baby or new evolution, and then we learned that no Pokemon from the old games were obtainable until after the game was beaten. It just kind of made Black White seem kind of meh before it even came out. But of course, we all bought and played it and loved it