Well, you both have shared quite a few thoughts here.
It doesn´t seem that this spin off was aimed to anyone else beyond its target audience, does it?
Perhaps Hasbro is trying to appeal to kids that love looking at flashy instant animations from Youtube, hence the short amount of time for each episode before gen 5 gets announced.
Will that strategy work for expanding the market to a new generation of kids by adapting their format to kids who are are more attracted to games like Fornite or humor based shows a la Teen Titans Go?
We´ll see but so far, Derpi only has 2k pictures related to this spin-off and /mlp/ doesn´t seem to be losing their minds all that much.
I am linking the EQD article that compiles a few responses from the art director (who worked on Rainbow Roadtrip as well). It doesn´t offer anything revelatory but it´s officially Gen 4.5 and the whole spin-off happens in an alternate universe. Because of that statement, this whole thing will be easier to dismiss for the fans if it doesn´t pan out in the end.
