Well since i'm a true pokemon fan and i'm only twelve (i played each game of pokemon except pokemon silver) i've downloaded pokemon go emidiatly, there are like 8 people in my class who play it. I asked "what pokemon are you looking forward to, in gen 2?" they asked me "what is gen 2?" i understand that that is very irritating but there will always be people who only play it for the hype.
The thing is, sure a lot of pokemon go players havent played any of the main games. But that's not their target market either. Its true that they did ride the hype train from a lot of pokemon fans, but you have to consider the amount of people they brought in with the app, into the pokemon world. ALso, pricing wise. pokemon go is much cheaper then a 40$ game, not even considering the 200$ barrier to entry required for the handheld console.
There a lot of people at my school who played Pokemon GO and were ligemently always 10 levels ahead of me. (they are still ahead of me) despite the fact they didn't know any type of pokemon besides pikachu. Now, only a couple months later, they will see my screen saver (whitch is my profile pic,) and they will just go on a rant on reasons why I'm gay and why I should kill my self. No joke.......