Tetsuya Nomura, Square Enix’s ever popular producer and director and, more importantly, creator of the Kingdom Hearts series recently said that there would be no Kingdom Hearts 3 by 2012 which broke many a fans’ heart. He also reconfirmed that Kingdom Hearts 3D was the next entry in the franchise, so the two games seemed to be completely separate products; however, that may not be the case.
Mr Nomura was one of the many developers who was asked to record an interview for Nintendo’s conference on the 29th and he began by talking about the title of his first 3DS game. He said ‘Although it is still a tentative name, we have included 3D in the new Kingdom Hearts game title. It also includes 3, which implies this may be the third iteration of Kingdom Hearts. You will be able to see what kind of game it will be like from this tentative name.’[source]
This seems to directly contradict the notion of KH3D and KH3 being separate titles and rather explicitly implies that they are one in the same. It’s important to note that the developer of KH3D is Square Enix Osaka, who were responsible for Birth By Sleep, as opposed to h.a.n.d., who are responsible for 358/2 Days and Re: Coded(and are licensed 3DS developers too) which indicates that it is of much higher importance. Birth by Sleep was treated as a main entry in the franchise, a Kingdom Hearts 0 almost, and the team responsible for the first two is still busy with FF Versus XIII. Another piece of supporting evidence is Re: Coded itself, Coded is the latest in the timeline of Kingdom Hearts and was originally intended to set the stage properly for Kingdom Hearts 3 but Re: Coded now sets the stage for Kingdom Hearts 3D, which is confirmed to be set after Coded.
This is not, however, a confirmation. There is certainly elements we’ve already witness of KH3D that may indicate that it is not the next main entry, one of which is the fact that the player controls a young, KH1 aged, Sora(and Riku too). This could indicate that the overall plot isn’t pushed as far forward as a KH3 does and it could be a simulation similar to Coded. It is also very possible that Mr Nomura is just trying to increase the hype for the game or just indicating that the game will be high quality and treated as if it was a main entry, like Birth By Sleep.