In an interview with IGN, Game Freak director, Shigeru Ohmori said that their work on the 3DS is coming to an end as Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are the “culmination of our work with the 3DS system.”
With games such as Pokémon X and Y including Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the company has seen each of its 3DS games as the full extent of what could be achieved on the handheld system.
“When we were making Pokemon X and Y, we really were trying to push the 3DS system to its absolute limits – which is what we thought we’d done. But when Sun and Moon came around, we completely redesigned the system, and actually ended up pushing the 3DS even further to what we thought was the most we could draw out of it.”
“With Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon,” explains Ohmori, “we’ve tried to eke that out more and really, really push the system to its absolute limits, and we’re now feeling that perhaps this is the maximum of what we can get out. So we’re really treating Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon as the culmination of our work with the 3DS system.”
This is no surprise as The Pokémon Company announced at E3 that development for a core Pokémon RPG title for the Switch is in the works and it’s the direction they’re focusing on for the future.
