The whole open world aspect is the engine that's driving the sales, this is something fans have been asking for since gen 3 I believe, so of course people will buy it despite the rapidly increasing list of bugs (sometimes even those that brick your save data), despite the woke bullshit (mostly in character design and character customization, outside of that there's no woke reference), despite you can no longer get all 1008 Pokemon in a single game, and everything.

Though it would probably have been better if they'd at the very least bring back the whole mega shinka mechanics, they introduced it in XY, introduced even further in ORAS, and brought back in a limited manner (only for the starters) in Pikabui.