Is it just me, or is it a little stupid that they are still releasing two superficially different versions of the same game? The actual differences between each pokemon sister game have always been incredibly minute, to the point of their existence being almost entirely extraneous. It made sense in the first few generations, as it was a clever marketing tool to force interaction between players. If you wanted to "catch 'em all", you needed to interact with someone else who played the game and trade, which generated the communal buzz that help skyrocket the franchise to its place of absurd cultural prominence. With the advent of online trading, however, this no longer makes sense. The differences in version are now a minor inconvenience that can be solved with a brief visit to the GTS, not to mention that the franchise has no longer has any need for a gimmick to incite player interaction. It appears that they only continue the two version trend as a blind adherence to tradition and as an attempt to scrape some extra cash out of superfans (although I'd imagine that extra revenue barely outshines the additional production costs).