Add to the fact that the Editor-in-Chief is already writing off Boruto and looking to Black Clover to become "The Next Naruto". Heck, the manga is barely two years old (and the anime has only been out for a couple of months), and it's already getting a PS4 VG release.
On the subject of merchandise, there's little demand for Boruto in Japan outside of possibly video games(and Boruto's only appearances in that regard are in expansions of Naruto UNS4, rather than his own solo game).
Again, speaking from my experience with the Gundam fandom here. One of the things about IBO was how much it got in it's first season. Not only did it get the coveted weekend timeslot, it also got merchandise based on the characters. We're talking pencil cases, towels, model stands with the characters' faces on them, a line of the characters reimagined as mice, a 1/100 scale no grade model kits in addition to the 1/144 HG line. In the case of the last item, Bandai hadn't made those in over half a decade. Build Fighters and Reconguista didn't get any of the other kinds of merchandise outside of their HG lines (or the same type of timeslots)... well, except for Fumina since she's a popular waifu. They even got IBO an American dub for Toonami and put it on every streaming service they could.
Anyway, something I had to explain to people was that this was proof that Sunrise/Bandai had more faith in IBO than Build Fighters or Reconguista, and in all likelihood had greater expectations on it to perform. It's easy to see where they think they're going to make their money.
When it came to telling people it wasn't doing well, this stuff was brought up. And what I saw during the second season said a lot. The merchandise with the characters on it? Gone. They stopped making the model stands, in fact they were giving away stands with the sale of HG kits as a promotion. Volume one of the second season had no incentives (s1 was sold at half price with promo codes for a game) and they cut back on the 1/100 model kits. I even remember seeing them announcing a character bust for one of the side characters that was cancelled (among other characters. Figure-Rise busts are now pretty much exclusively idol characters). And all this was on top of the ratings being a complete disaster. It was a case of the show losing support behind the scenes, and I've seen one of the producers complaining about it on social media (and blaming people who gave the show a bad reputation online for scaring people away).
If Boruto is doing that badly, they'll start scaling him back. The fact he gets tagged onto his dad's games is telling enough compared to Black Clover. It's kinda like how after the NaruHina stuff failed to sell after The Last they went back to trying to promote Team 7. And if they can't make their money, they'll close up shop.
Edited by RulesofNature, 13 December 2017 - 03:08 AM.