SEGA doesn't want to "step the franchise back" to make Sonic Adventure 3 "just to make people happy"

Coming from a Polygon interview with Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka...

“I hear people saying that they want Adventure 3, but the path that we’re on and ... Adventure 3, what fans want that to be, might not be an advancement of the series. So I don’t want to do an Adventure 3 and step the franchise back just to give the fans what they want. From the developer standpoint, every Sonic game that we’re making is taking new steps and advances, furthering the game in a new direction, and that’s dictated where the Sonic series has been going. If we can get the gameplay to evolve and get to a place where Adventure 3 makes sense, then you might see an Adventure 3 come out, but we don’t want to take the entire series back to where it was just to make people happy. We want to advance the idea of what a Sonic game is.”

I mean, I don't even know what to say about this. It seems like such a stubborn approach to the franchise. To outright say something like this surprises me. I guess that's why we got Sonic Mania? A little something for fans who wanted classic Sonic, while Sonic Team continues to take Sonic's 3D outings in whatever direction they want?