It is not the cute style that makes Pokemon games more suited to kids... I love cute games.
It's the gameplay that is for kids... Too simple combat, low difficulty, much much needless grinding, no real story. Pokemon games are made for people with:
1) Too much free time on their hands for all the grinding
2) Simple game mechanics suitable for low intelligence persons/kids(intelligence raises with age)
3) Simple happy-happy story like a Saturday morning Cartoon
aka as kids.
Advance Wars is a cute game, but has a chess-like depth in its gameplay, easy to learn difficult to master sort of thing. In fact, i am a very experienced strategy player on PC, and still find it one of the best strategy series of all time... It is also suitable for pick up and play style, it can be played on small doses for example on the train to work. Much more suitable for an adult, although still playable by kids if they like it. It has nothing to do with graphical style and theme.
PS: I don't want to insult anybody, but the idea that most of Pokemon's fanbase aren't kids is depressing to me... Don't get me wrong, i played the first gen back in the day, but i find this series too boring for an experienced gamer...
You're describing pretty much most rpg's, most have simply mechanics because they work good enough, there's no need to fix what's broken (an example of that is Dragon Quest, the mechanics are always the same yet, in Japan they sell more than Final Fantasy which is always changing the mechanics).
As for the time part, most hand-held games can be played in short bursts which can accumulate for many hours after a while, look at Monster Hunter, it's requires a lot of grinding in a way.
As for the intelligence part, that's not true, we simply learn more things the older we get, our IQ doesn't increashie, sometimes it even decreases.
I enjoyed Advance Wars much more when I was a kid than I do now, same goes for Warcraft 1,2,3, Age of Empires, Starcraft, etc...
I've been playing games since I was 4 and been playing every Pokemon game that came out, even though they're far from being my favourite games, they are good and fun games, that's the point of a game, to be fun.
Here's a fan-poll to show you:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/661226-pokemon-black-version-2/64574574
Back on topic though, now that I think of it... I wonder if Nintendo would be nice enough to bring the SMT IV pre-order bonus goodies. <3
They'll only say release dates, and maybe something related to Flipnote and Miiverse.
Flipnote will be released this week in Europe according to what several websites say, so yeah, maybe it could be that as well (I think the US will get it next month from what I read).