When did you realize that you Pokemon was a game that would keep people playing into adulthood?
JM: When we developed Red and Blue we weren't explicitly targeting children. If you look at the animation, for instance, that was meant to appeal to kids with cute designs and so on. But if you look at the game and that design, even from Red and Blue it was intended to be a game that adults could also enjoy. In that regard, there's not been any change in how we design the games.
Just like how children and adults both like playing soccer -- children might like it at first because the ball is round and colourful but adults put far more thought into it.
How do you balance the adult and child audiences?
JM: It's very difficult. In Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire they're remakes of an original game and we want the older players to be able to enjoy it, not just the new players. So how do we make new content to keep them interested? For instance, in X and Y we introduced Mega Evolutions so in ORAS we've taken that a little further, dug a little deeper.
We wanted to carry that story further, but it's very difficult in terms of creating content that will be interesting and captures a child. But we put a lot of effort into creating something each target could enjoy.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/pokemon-interview 