>>564288942/2
by the time ruby and sapphire were out, the hype train is gone; kids have moved on, people are finding a new thing.
gen 3 had to bring people back in, and like masuda said, the new tech was hard to develop for, so some features were missing this time around; nobody knew before release, so people who still liked pokemon, or kids who never experienced it before, but heard about it from siblings or cousins, bought ruby and sapphire anyway, just two years after crystal's release.
the missing features didn't kill pokemania, but the new hardware wasn't enough to revive it. pokemania died because of a lack of content during the gen 2 development, NOT because gold and silver sold poorly or left a poor impression, and NOT because gen 3 was missing features that johto fans loved.
a lot of us did find gen 3 to be a downgrade, sure, and many of us checked out until diamond and pearl's release. it wasn't because gen 3 killed pokemania, because pokemania was already dead.
on top of ALL of this, by 2002, it had been 6 years since Red and Green; in the west, we got gen 3 a year later, and the gap wasn't quite as wide, but it was still several years; kids who were in primary school for gen 1 or 2 were older now.
during the gen 3 era, i was in primary school still, but i played all three gens, mostly in order, since i got gen 1 and 2 as a gift from some older kids who had outgrown the series.
i'd say i was 9 or 10, and despite us all being kids, i still got picked on for playing a "kiddy game" because it was pokemon.
my best friend was a gen 1 kid, and had this to say about pokemania's death in the UK when i asked her about her experience with pokemania's decline:
>"secondary school homework and developing a sudden interest bucking my hips against a girl's jaw in the local cemetery. at least, that's what made me tune out for a while." 
