Hey everyone, I was wondering why the first 4 English ex era sets(EX Ruby and Sapphire through Ex Team Magma vs Team Aqua) still have the e-Reader borders and support while their Japanese counterparts did away with them when the ex era began? Let me know if there was ever a reason said as to why this is. Thanks!
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Foreign languages cards never had the e-reader layout on those sets as well. Also Team Magma vs Team Aqua in English has a mixture of the two layouts that makes no sense to me at all. Not sure about the reasons behind these choices.
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Interesting so only English kept the layout into the ex era then?
I’m not sure why they didn’t continue with the e-Reader border into the EX Series for other languages. All I know is that the only non-English e-Reader cards are e-Series and some promos. No foreign e-Reader border EX Series card, AFAIK. @quaador could probably give more insight into this
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I honestly don’t know a reason why exactly. It’s super weird. Especially with Team Magma vs Team Aqua where Team Magma’s and Aqua’s Pokemon have regular border, but cards like Squirtle, Bulbasaur, ex cards etc. still have e-reader border. It’s a weird mixture. I just don’t have the answers to why is that.
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Yeah, it is weird that the regular pokemon have the e-reader border/logo and the Team Aqua and Magma pokemon do not.
These sets also have some 2004 & 2005 variants from preconstructed decks that do not have the e-borders.
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Interesting so there may not even be a known reason. Well that’s still an answers! Thanks everyone whos commented so far. 
There was a deck made of one of these first 4 sets (dont remember which) were the cards did not even feature the e rader strips. TCA gaming made a video of it and all these decks dissapeared from ebay immediately.
While the tcg side of Japanese pokemon discontinued it, there were still several non-tcg cards for the E-reader made in Japan. These are the battle e promotional cards, as far as I could tell the last one made of these was in november 2004. As for why the normal tcg cards discontinued it, my guess would be that the E reader just became less popular and they did not see the need to continue the e reader strip.
my wild guess is that it’s a popularity decision–the e-reader accessory might have been more popular in America than other countries
You could be thinking of the EX Battle Stadium that was released in 2004 to be a way for you to quickly have battles. It contained 2 decks that contains cards from the first 6 English ex sets and yes they don’t have e-Reader strips. Yeah if I recall they kept making cards you could scan for the games. Cool to hear they they kept them going for a little bit regardless.