I found this on Redshit, and honestly, I have to agree with them for once:
And is this yearn for stagnation, for sticking to the status quo and for refusing change that is going to kill the franchise. Look at what happened to the games that changed protagonists to characters that were not part of the first trilogy or changed settings:
Apollo Justice was the most selling game of the franchise before the first trilogy's remaster, and yet it was a controversial game bc "WTF Happened to Phoenix? #NotMyNick!" "Where tf is Edgeworth? Where tf is Maya? Where tf is Gumshoe?" "#NotMyAceAttorney!". Funny how DD and SoJ are some of the least selling mainline games, and they were pandering HARD to the trilogy nostalgics.
GAA/DGS may have been done well in the west, but that's because we got the two games together and got to enjoy the story and characters in its entirety. Can you guess what is the reason why these games didn't sell well in Japan, particularly the first one? Exactly, bc there were no references towards the mainline 1st trilogy outside of Ryuu being Phoenix' ancestor.
But looking at that popularity poll and how most of the fandom is overly focused on the og cast (especially miles), narumitsu and not much else, well... All I'm going to say is, it was a good run.
Who knows, maybe I'm in the wrong and AA7 being just Phoenix and Miles going "nuh-uh!" against each other for 30+ hours with the OG cast making quirky, flanderized quips every 5 minutes will sell like hotcakes and become the best ace attorney game ever.
(And no, this is not me saying I hate narumitsu or some other crazy stuff. This is me not wanting one of my favorite videogame franchise to die of stagnation like it happened with many others before)