Nintendo is up 35% on Pokemon Go success | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo is up 35% on Pokemon Go success

finance.yahoo.com

72 pointsderwiki40 comments

I want to voice my concerns about the future of Pokemon Go so I'll do it here.

The power inflation is insane. The game will probably be unplayable to new players by the end of this month. Unlike Ingress, the game does not have a way to "remove" power from the game. You can increase the combined combat points of your pokemon collection unbound, and you have a massive power inflation going on. Sure, you get diminishing returns on the training but in the end the pokemon don't disappear and you have a permanent increase in strength. Ingress mechanics always removes XM from the system and you get an equilibrium with the spawn rate of XM and the consumption rate of XM (roughly equal to the rate of portal turnover). Pokemon Go has none of that. If this isn't addressed properly I think the game might just die.

There's two things of interest here. The game itself, which is really thin as far as gameplay and will dry up like a standard MMORPG as people go crazy leveling and the initial rush dies down. But the social aspect of meeting up at hotspots and dropping lures to get a party started and all that feels like a new sort of sensation that should persist beyond this one game.

The real key is the location data from Ingress. There's plenty of room to expand into other games, to create a cross-game persistent world or do any number of fun things (they already have the original Ingress game and a travel app based on it). It'll be interesting to see if they can keep branching off from this. I think ultimately it could become a sort of better Foursquare and that's where real advertising $ could come into play.

It's been an advertiser's dream for a while for a phone app to make some sort of "location alerts with coupons" hit critical mass and slathering that over this game would be extremely easy (go to the Starbucks to get a Pikachu or free lure!)

Well, it's a fun game. I dropped a lure near my place and a few people showed up and we had a nice chat. Pretty compelling story TBH.

What I'm concerned about is the disturbing lack of attention towards game economics management. (read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy)

Now that you say it I can totally see this. They need to add some major features for this game to stay in the top slot for very long.

Battles between friends, messaging, trading, etc.

I'd like to see them add in battling to capture Pokemon in the beginning as well but I'm ok with it how it is right now. It's a fun game that I think introduces the gamification of walking to a new level that I love. It gets nerds (like me) out of my house to play and really brings AR to a new level.

It would be awesome to have more rogue-like games that are AR based where you have mazes and bosses to get through.

In Ingress, only inactive areas had XM decay as a significant source of destruction. Most areas saw the majority of destruction redone by players, and the only limit on that was generally people's willingness to spend time farming.

In Pokemon Go, Attacking and powering up gyms takes longer, but is still fundamentally tied to farming equipment (potions and revives).

We'll see how Pokemon Go develops, given it's growth at present it's hard to predict how stable or volatile gym membership will end up being.

Pokemon Go should implement a way for businesses to request pokéstops be placed at their store front, for which the Pokémon company could charge a small fee. Think of the revenue they could generate. Consumers would actually seek out the advertising instead of blocking it.

I doubt this is a great opportunity for businesses other than having an image of the storefront in the app. Geolocation range is wide enough that players don't need to go inside the store or be in front of it in order to have access to the Pokéstop. I guess for areas with low density of commercial storefronts could attract some foot traffic, but doubt it will be that significant in long term.

It worked today for my coworkers and I. We were walking by a poke-stop that's beside a restaurant. One of the servers stepped out and said if we stopped in to eat he'd throw lures at the poke-stop. It got seven of us to stay and sit and eat.

The action range is 40m in both Ingress and PGo for now. Ingress players have long suggested restaurants can benefit the most from such stops. In fact there are several locales that contain 2 or 3 of these stops/portals we favor for farming gear and they are visited weekly by both sides. Most of the team is seated, eating/drinking during the event as in many cases you must be inside to access all 3, and it's preferrable to stay out of the rain/sun. PGo is far more popular than Ingress ever was, so this would be significant revenue for the establishment.

Seems to work great for the local Dunkin Donuts where I live. You have to enter the parking lot to get the PokeStop, then you see their store, and are probably more likely yo come in and get a donut or coffee. I've grabbed more coffee from them since. It's basically like free advertising for them since people have to go walk by their store and actively think about going in or not vs. never entering the parking lot and maybe not noticing it. Sure the free advertising won't pull in every customer, but it will increase the average number of customers who come in.

I'm imagining a future where there are multiple location based games and local businesses will need a way to keep track of all the games and which ones drive foot-traffic.

I'm also imagining a startup that manages all of a businesses "in game" listings so they don't have to deal with going in and out of apps all day.

I think the inevitable future will be more integrated than just walking past a storefront. Think virtual poke-prizes with your happy meal. Training gyms at coffee-shops. Battle night at your pizza shop. Plus the inevitable market for items Steam style. I can see this getting much, much bigger.

Would work for malls and fairs. There's people using lures (that attract Pokemon for all player around) and selling lemonade already.

Businesses like Walmart or Target have large enough buildings you'd have to go inside. Same goes for malls probably. Not everyone who goes to the pokéstop is going to spend money, but even if 1% of people who visit buy something, the pokéstop is still generating far more value than any other kind of online ad.

Maybe put a physical QR code in the window or inside the store that needs to be scanned to get access to the Pokestop?

However, I'm not really sure business really want to advertise to people whose intent is just to collect virtual Pokemon.

Maybe they could somehow tie real-world purchase to in-app tokens, i.e. buy $10 worth of stuff at some store and receive 100 Pokecoins.

Eh, it's not THAT wide, you definitely have to be within sight of it

I came to the same realisation when I've discovered that closest Pokemon Gym is right outside/next to a local Lidl shop.

At least in Ingress they did something like this. They partnered with Vodafone so every Vodafone store became a Portal. They also had a partnership with a drugstore chain where you could get item codes inside the store. So it's not unrealistic.

I hope the success of Pokemon Go convinces Nintendo to do a proper mobile port of Advance Wars, or maybe even a native mobile game. Warbits is good, but I'd love to see what Intelligent Systems could do with a native iOS game.

I was just thinking -- as any NES-era child does -- that perhaps the greatest benefit of Pokemnon Go (ive never played a Pokemon game) is that it convinces Nintendo to port its classic IPs to mobile. As a very disappointed WiiU owner, mobile seems like a brighter future for Nintendo than the console wars.

Nintendo 3DS is continuing to do so well right now I don't think they have a big incentive to port to iOS/Android. I personally was just deciding whether or not to buy a 3DS (my first *DS) and the content available for it but not on mobile was the biggest selling point.

Making the games available on mobile could very well eat into their platform profits. Unless they start failing in that area I don't see them investing in it in the short term.

Although it would obviously be a big cash cow if they chose to either way. But they wouldn't be able to sell games for $39 like they do now on the Nintendo eShop.

Well Fire Emblem (fantasy advance wars) is coming to mobiles soon so it would make sense for advance wars to follow it.

I bet it would be up even higher if Niantic (sp.?) and Nintendo had a formalized data sharing agreement. See HN discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12071098

Because folks trading $NTDOY surely are deeply concerned with formalized data sharing agreements...

And they didn't even make proper Pokemon game. What I mean by that, this is something expected, since AR gaming on Nintendo's platforms is nothing new. What led to popularity is the iOS/Android platform.

This game is bollocks, I didn't even installed it after I saw total permission request over Google Acc.

And what shocked me the most, is how lazy this game was done, I am not saying that infrastructure behind it is bad, I do not know about it anything, but the lack of combat and everything else makes me feel this is rather bad attempt to recreate Pokemon experience we all know and love from other Nintendo systems.

tl;dr: I really do not get the hype behind this game.

Honestly it sounds like you didn't even give it a chance. The game has a ton of success largely because it gets people out into the world, finding new Pokemon as they go. Niantic is going to expand into PVP battles and the like, but it's not that bad of a game. Just needs some time to grow.

It currently feels like an MVP. I'm sure it will be great once they add a proper battle system. I can easily see myself sinking hundreds of dollars into it.

I think part of the joy is in the simplicity. Walk to a Pokemon, catch it. I think people have different expectations for mobile apps, ie. the small learning curve.

The game isn't just the game, it's the social experiment of walking to a place with a lure and seeing 15 people playing. It's hearing someone talk about catching a pokemon you just caught yourself at the same location. It's Tinder for gamers.

The lack of gameplay is probably intentional. There is very little to do without going for a nice walk. If you play it like a walk supplement, it's great fun and not overwhelming. If you go on a walk just to catch Pokemon, it's a nice outing - nothing more.

One more thing I dont understand the value of, just like twitter.

Do you always like to brag about your ignorance?

I mean I don't personally use Twitter or play Pokemon Go, but it's not to difficult to see the value they provide to (millions of) other people.

The main difference is Pokemon Go actually can make money.

It's a very popular game with a lot of people willing to spend a lot of money to get ahead.

I think this is just a glimpse at Nintendo IP's potential on mobile. They've kept their IP's very close to their own hardware until recently.

Having a Pokemon mobile game is a no-brainer, and I don't think that's just in hindsight. What other major mobile opportunities are there for Nintendo's IP besides porting classic games and such? Genuinely curious.

That's true, that particular IP makes extra sense on mobile devices. I think the number of individuals now in the category of having plenty of disposable income but not necessarily having the time/drive to buy Nintendo's dedicated consoles will prove a very profitable audience on the devices they already own (iOS/Android). Nintendo could charge a serious premium for any of their apps and I bet many people would pay it. Or they can release freemium apps with gobs of unlockable content... Either way, it seems like its inevitable at this point that they will venture outside of their little walled garden with their closely guarded IP's.

Wii Fit seems like a natural... fit. They already ship with a step counter that integrates into your game at home. If would be pretty cool actually if there was a virtual yoga teacher in the park and people gathered and did yoga as a rag tag group.

I think the key would be making Pokemon Go work and then building incentives to play other titles, rewards for sticking to Nintendo's sphere.

You should try it - I didn't understand the appeal until I found that I had spent my entire Sunday walking around town looking for pocket monsters

If you create a Pokestop, they will come. One thing Niantic did was turn certain businesses into portals - Pokemon Go could make many times more money with a similar deal.

You don't understand the value of Twitter, yet are an HN reader?

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