Well... Even to this day Pokemon is the second best selling franchise out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Selling_Video_Game_Franchises

The 36 people in this article isn't a very large number... A lot of the people that play Pokemon today are actually in our 20s. Addictive? Perhaps a little. But the games have gotten a lot more elaborate than they have in the past. It's more than just collecting them all now, it's about the literally hundreds of things to do in each of the worlds, the oh-so difficult Battle Frontier which very few have beaten, the Breeding to get Pokemon with higher stats and moves not normally known by a particular species, EV training, the mini games, random quests, all of the post-game quests, harvest-moon style farming, and of course, catching them all... Not to mention all of the new multiplayer aspects, like the launcher battles in Black and White (The newest games) which add a whole new depth to battles.

tl;dr I am a Pokemon nut, this article misleads about the general state of the Pokemon franchise, and the age a majority of us are.