As in, the older main generation games like Red/Blue, Gold/Silver and Ruby/Sapphire?
I think there may be an unfortunate kernel of truth in this to be honest, because a few things about the design of the games and some expectations people would have make them rather difficult to rerelease.
1. The games are based around multiplayer
Well you can beat the main story while playing solo, but you certainly can't collect all the Pokemon or beat all the sidequests on your own.
And that's a bit of a difficult thing for Nintendo to get working for eShop games.
For example, the old code that was made to get the trading and local multiplayer battles working was designed for the Game Boy hardware and the presence of physical link cables. Seems like it may be pretty hard to update this to work with the wireless multiplayer functionality of the 3DS, right?
Then you run into issue B, who the hell are you going to play with? Not many people only a 3DS yet, and the userbase would immediately be split between every single generation in the series (since Diamond/Pearl and Black/White are playable on a 3DS, as are the upcoming Black and White 2). I doubt many will find opponents offline who both have a 3DS and are playing the same generation of Pokemon through the eShop. That'd probably be a group less than a few thousand strong. Not to mention they have to be playing the opposite version to you to make trading useful...
So Nintendo would probably have to add online multiplayer, right? That's not in any of these games, so that's basically recoding between six or nine different games.
Oh wait, but then you'd need to figure out how to code wifi trading between games from different generations, like the original releases... damn.
That's the minimum
2. And then, what if people want compatibility with later games?
Oh God, it's got ten times more complicated.
Remember how Nintendo basically declared trading between the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games nearly impossible due to differences in coding? Yeah, they'd have to overcome that.
And between Black and White and older games? You do know there's probably a tech reason that you can't trade between the GBA and DS ones except through a one way system towards the later games, right?
Now imagine the hell of trying to get trading between Red and Blue and Black and White 2 working... not pretty.
Is this possibly why they're not releasing the older Pokemon games on the Virtual Console/eShop?
I think there may be an unfortunate kernel of truth in this to be honest, because a few things about the design of the games and some expectations people would have make them rather difficult to rerelease.
1. The games are based around multiplayer
Well you can beat the main story while playing solo, but you certainly can't collect all the Pokemon or beat all the sidequests on your own.
And that's a bit of a difficult thing for Nintendo to get working for eShop games.
For example, the old code that was made to get the trading and local multiplayer battles working was designed for the Game Boy hardware and the presence of physical link cables. Seems like it may be pretty hard to update this to work with the wireless multiplayer functionality of the 3DS, right?
Then you run into issue B, who the hell are you going to play with? Not many people only a 3DS yet, and the userbase would immediately be split between every single generation in the series (since Diamond/Pearl and Black/White are playable on a 3DS, as are the upcoming Black and White 2). I doubt many will find opponents offline who both have a 3DS and are playing the same generation of Pokemon through the eShop. That'd probably be a group less than a few thousand strong. Not to mention they have to be playing the opposite version to you to make trading useful...
So Nintendo would probably have to add online multiplayer, right? That's not in any of these games, so that's basically recoding between six or nine different games.
Oh wait, but then you'd need to figure out how to code wifi trading between games from different generations, like the original releases... damn.
That's the minimum
2. And then, what if people want compatibility with later games?
Oh God, it's got ten times more complicated.
Remember how Nintendo basically declared trading between the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games nearly impossible due to differences in coding? Yeah, they'd have to overcome that.
And between Black and White and older games? You do know there's probably a tech reason that you can't trade between the GBA and DS ones except through a one way system towards the later games, right?
Now imagine the hell of trying to get trading between Red and Blue and Black and White 2 working... not pretty.
Is this possibly why they're not releasing the older Pokemon games on the Virtual Console/eShop?
