Catch em all is seriously kind of dying, the GTS is full of hacks, and only ridiculous trades. Good luck getting anything unless you have a bunch of one-time available Pokemon x to give away. This slogan is over 10 years old, and I don't think the children around here are interested in catching ALL of 649 pokemon, moreover, I don't think today's children have the patience to catch all of 649 pokemon, nor do they care. If they could find a way to make the GTS reasonable then it would be very reasonable that you could catch them all with only one cartridge. The GTS was VERY good when Diamond and Pearl came out, but now it has just gone to pot. The best thing about Pokemon now is its online, so I only have to buy one cartridge.
Its becoming a game where you play through the story, and then put it down just like every other game.
Unfortunately hacking has completely ruined the online experience, since in order to compete at all, you pretty much have to hack. You can't get anywhere with an average pokemon that you have raised in game, which is what 90% of the casual players have. Even the battle area's are much too difficult to do with a normally raised pokemon, and sometimes even impossible to beat with a hack (I have tried). Thus the game turns the casual player off, which again, is about 90% of the Pokemon fanbase.
Even the competitive game has gotten to be too much for me, and something not worth my time. I used to spend hours breeding the perfect pokemon, but really, I was not able to use those pokemon in any way in the game that benefitted me. It was fun to do it back then for personal satisfaction, but really if I am spending my time on gaming there are much better things for me to spend my time on than breeding Pokemon that don't benefit me at all because some hacker will come in and beat me lickety split! They were good for taking out friends in local battles, but at my age, no one plays Pokemon anymore, and challenging other kids is definitely off limits due to my age and parental paranoia about someone my age talking to another strange child.
So yes, something needs to change here, first of all being they need to make it impossible to hack, which is something I doubt can happen, especially since you can hack on another cartridge and just bring the pokemon over. I know Nintendo can detect hacks at their official sanctioned tournaments, so I am sure that they can find a way to implement that in the new games.
The people buying these games are the 5-10 year old kids, and the 18 year and over crowd, there is no inbetween. But most people I know are playing it casually, and the actual competitive game is a very small percentage of the fanbase. Note this goes for my area, and may differ from the area that you live in. I live in an area where basically no one has a 3DS unless you are again, a 5-10 year old child, and mobile phones and iProducts are all the rage.
If Nintendo were to release the original pokemon games on the iPod touch or the iPhone I HAVE NO DOUBT it would be a huge craze again, with the original games, and people trying to catch them all. Simply because everyone would download it on a device they already have. Someone released a fake Pokemon yellow a while back on the app store and it quickly rose to the top of the charts for sales. But this will only happen if pigs can fly.
ING ONE!