The PoGo game must be giving Nintendo believers a big morale boost.
Nintendo have been hesitant because they don't want to dilute and diminish their IP, but if the experience is nailed (PoGo is close enough to nailing it, and should only get better) then the IP should only be bolstered by the mobile version.
On the flipside, a traditional Mario / DK / whatever title on mobile for example would eat away at their console market, which is what they're aiming to avoid.
It is easy to imagine that someone could just re-skin the game engine with the official Pokemon licensed IP and put in a Pokemon-world map to connect all the levels together.
Good Nintendo games could be very profitable at $5 to $10 per title on iOS and Android because of the volume.
People spend way more than that on subscription models and micro-transactions. Look at Fallout Shelter, Crossy Road, Fallen London (really niche, but still has a strong active base of around 30k MAU).
$30 is a hard sell on mobile games, because most people understand that app store is full of incomplete, unpolished, dishonest, over-hyped or some combination thereof apps. There are terrible Pac-Man clones where the AI is too dumb to even touch you [citation needed]. Conversely, there are ported popular franchises where your game play is severely limited by micro-transactions or artificial time limits.
Ignoring bad control schemes, mobile is damn near the perfect platform for gaming. Everyone carries a phone or tablet. Even kids carry phones. Too bad it remains somewhat tainted by bad developers and greedy companies alike.
That's the whole point. Mobile devices aren't the perfect platforms for gaming. They have the worst control scheme, which makes it all but impossible to pull off great games in "traditional" genres (platformers, shooters; in fact, now that I think about it, anything with a movable camera). So we get new things that don't require a decent controller, but have the gameplay dumbed down to compensate.
This is why the 3DS still sells. It's incredibly difficult to put out a good AAA game on a phone (and forget about selling it for a reasonable price).
My point was not that mobile > mobile console. My point was that companies want to capitalize on mobile since is always available by most people. Even though you can make a lot of decent ports for mobile (e.g. swipe input instead of a joystick for Pac-Man or turn-based menu combat like Pokemon entries), a $30 price point is too high for nearly all games specifically for reasons that we have both cited: am I getting a full game or a watered down POS, are the controls sane, do I have to put up with ads after every event, etc.
Playing Pokemon Go has inspired me to dig out my ancient gameboy and to start playing Pokemon again. I'm strongly considering buying a new Nintendo device—I'd forgotten how fun Pokemon is.
Margin is crucial between "I've got Pokemon game" and "I have no Pokemon game".
"You've got Pokemon game on your phone, but they say there's a some other Pokemon game which maybe have some others features, but that would cost you $300" is not an unique selling proposition.
> Furthermore, their hardware gives them a base for their own software sales, for accessory-sales, royalties and the possibility for their own online infrastructure
http://www.zeldainformer.com/articles/a-deeper-analysis-of-n...
If I had to guess this is both tactile and graphical, as touchscreens and mobile graphics libs were not designed especially for them.
I still think they have a broad appeal for Nintendo fans.
I think they see the writing on the wall and want to diversify.
You can do crap Mario for mobile, and nobody cares and you got bad PR and sales of consoles go south.
You can do great Mario for mobile, and everybody got Mario for free and sales of consoles go south.
Running between these scenarios is tough.
I don't know how much longer the game industry can expect its target audience to spend $60 each on piles of games. Things have been trending towards freemium for long enough that it almost seems weird when the game that everyone's playing is not free(ish).
My point being, if enough people aren't buying console+game anymore, would the opportunity cost of doing it on mobile instead be that bad?
O_RLY