For several years, Pokémon fans have been begging and pleading for a core title in the series to adopt a fully-3D world—or barring that, something upgraded from the usual 2D fare. So far, no dice.

In fact, the upcoming Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 titles aren’t even built to take advantage of the newer 3DS, instead choosing to adopt the much safer DS hardware.

Granted, 3DS owners will still be able to play both games without a problem, but not immediately moving onto the 3D system suggests a lot of things—most notably a lack in confidence for the handheld. After all, a Pokémon Gray or something similar for the Nintendo 3DS would arguably sell millions of units in short order.

But as Game Freak founder Junichi Masuda tells Game Informer, their development plan for Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 actually has more to do with the fact that there’s still a huge install base for the original DS line:

So first, being a direct sequel to Pokémon Black version and Pokémon White version, we really wanted to make sure that players of the original game would be able to play the sequels. Maybe not all of them have a Nintendo 3DS, but they definitely had a Nintendo DS if they played the original games. Also, the Nintendo DS platform is really just owned by pretty much the most people around the world. So many kids and so many players from the around the world have the Nintendo DS platform, so it made sense that if we wanted to have the most people possible play the games to put it on the Nintendo DS.

Masuda also addressed some other common questions about the Pokémon series, such as why they haven’t gone full 3D (shifting visual styles is a lot of work), how often fans ask him about a Pokémon MMO (not that much), and whether he thinks the battle system could be sped up (he’s not a fan of the idea).

Source: Game Informer