Pokemon Go isn't the solution to Nintendo's problems | Hacker News Reader

Pokemon Go isn't the solution to Nintendo's problems

wired.com

40 pointsJackPoach52 comments

I'm not sure I understand the logic of "it can't be popular because the servers are always down." It seems, of course, because it's so popular that the servers are often down. It also seems that periods of downtime are extended, but sporadic: http://ispokemongodownornot.com/

Put yourself in Niantic's shoes, pre-release. Let's say that you start with, "Let's pick our busiest day ever for Ingress, and double that." Then someone else in the room says, "No, triple it." And something else says, "No, quadruple it!" The problem is that none of those would be remotely enough. This game is the most popular game in mobile history, and while it's easy to say, "of course!" and point to the confluence of Pokémon and other trends to explain it, nobody predicted that this morning in Addison, Texas, at 9:30am, there would be 26 people ranging from young children to retirees playing the game in a local park.

Perhaps the game is already on the way out, but for now it's bigger than any mobile game has ever been, so difficulty scaling doesn't surprise me at all.

That park you speak of had close to 300-400 people catching Pokemon last night in 90+ degree temps.

The game is popular across all segments.

Buzzy article, contradictory in spots and doesn't leave a concise conclusion. No idea what Chris is trying to get at. He suggests that the most popular app to date isn't sustainable, yet mentions that it's producing tons and tons of potential buyers for the new Pokemon releases.

Chris states "Pokemon Go‘s remarkable success surely awakened Nintendo’s conservative management team to the potential of mobile gaming" but in the previous paragraph says "The company is developing mobile versions of its strategy RPG series Fire Emblem and its adorable anthropomorphic Sims-style Animal Crossing, but their success is not guaranteed". Clearly their marketing team has "awaken" before pokemon to develop these other IPs?

/rant

Even if Nintendo doesn't end up making much money out of the Pokemon Go game, the value of the mostly positive press that the company has received will certainly also affect positively product sales in the future.

> mostly positive press

I guess that's one perspective.

From a gamer's perspective, Pokemon Go has been a disaster so far. The app itself is pretty clunky and prone to freezing. The servers have been down for lengthy periods during prime hours. And, worst of all, they took a beloved franchise and essentially gutted it, which is a huge disappointment to everyone who's loved Pokemon since the '90s.

Casual gamers will be put off by the poor technical execution, and the core gaming audience will be repelled by its shallow, gimmicky gameplay. It has all the markings of a fad. Niantic better have some pretty massive updates up their sleeve...

"It has all the markings of a fad"

My thoughts as well. It already favours players who play obsessively. Casual gamers can't really expect to ever challenge a gym in even a reasonably populated area. I was excited by the idea and I lost interest after a few days. No guarantee that everyone else will follow suit, but I have that sort of gut feeling.

Actually,

With how terrible the gym metagame is right now, casual players can absolutely take on a gym.

I placed a pretty decent Jolteon in one and my lower-leveled Wife pretty much beat the crap out of it with a Vaporeon.

Right now: Vaporeon rules the streets.

There's a great post about why this is right now on /r/TheSilphRoad: https://redd.it/4tylty

But I do concur - it is looking like it will be a fad. They will have to pump updates and new features into it in order to keep it alive, or it will die quick. Already 2/6 (of my) office workers have dropped from playing it.

Wow that is ridiculous, I had no idea. Thanks for the link. I guess "normal" Pokemon rules don't apply, perhaps that's why I've been having trouble!

This is just how MMOs work. You can play casually for fun, but you'll never compete in end-game content with the hardcore players.

> It already favours players who play obsessively.

This is the reason I generally stick to games with good single player campaigns. On rare occasions I'll play multiplayer with friends. But I think the last online multiplayer game I played with strangers was Left 4 Dead. I was always either booted from the game early on because I didn't play "correctly" or I received a "guided tour" by someone who had put 1000 hours into it. Just playing the game wasn't really an option, apparently.

I agree with the sibling that favoring obsessive players is par for the course with MMOs (or those who spend the most $$, which I refuse to do).

That said, I'm playing Pokemon GO (at nearly 40 years old) because it's just fun to collect the Pokemon, level up, and socialize with other players. I really don't care about taking over a gym. I can play this without competing with those people who have 40 hours a week to throw away on it. My social group largely seems to feel the same way, although a few are obsessive. And while I'm fairly active already, it has encouraged me to be more active.

As for whether it's a fad, it might be. Normally with free-to-play games I lose interest as soon as it becomes ridiculously difficult to rank up. With this, I think I'll start to lose interest when the rest of my social group loses interest. I think, for me, Pokemon Go is more likely to be replaced by something similar than just abandon out of lack of interest, though.

Clunky and freezing etc. I highly doubt they anticipated the popularity of the app prior to release.

The thing is, it's not just the server woes (completely understandable given the unprecedented popularity of the game), but the game client itself is, from a technical perspective, garbage.

Even if the servers were dealing with two orders of magnitude less volume, the app would still be an incredibly brittle piece of code, ceasing to respond to taps, locking up after a capture, and otherwise falling over at the slightest server latency. It's a distant cry from the kind of polished retail builds that come out of first-party Nintendo studios like EAD.

> worst of all, they took a beloved franchise and essentially gutted it

I disagree. Nintendo is absolutely trying to reestablish itself and its many IPs. With this shift toward mobile/AR Pokemon stands to be the killer app that sells VR/AR in a few years time. I do agree that the execution of the release was a nightmare. It lacks features and is reliably unreliable. Niantic\Nintendo should not haved rushed the release to coincide with summer and simply waited a year.

The game's technical issues aside, I'm sure that Niantic/The Pokemon Company executives would not agree with what you said. Pokemon Go is a worldwide success and the top grossing app in both iOS and Google Play stores.

It's actually remarkable how much staying power and uptick it has, given that it's so flaky. This is the most successful technical failure I've ever seen in the gaming industry. I'm not sure yet what to make of that.

If this game weren't Pokemon themed, I, and surely many others, would have definitely given up on the app long ago. But there's just something about catching Pokemon in a park with friends that makes the practically 50% downtime seem bearable.

The fact that multiple generations of humans who have ever played Pokemon, have independently "invented" the idea of the Pokemon MMO, and wanted their idea to come to life, makes this unsurprising.

"Oh I wish Pokemon were real! I could run around and catch them! Get strong and battle other people.. I would totally be like Ash/Red and travel around the country to catch a rare Pokemon and beat the gyms!" - Thought every Pokemon player that has ever existed

Compound 20 years of interest in a Pokemon MMO and this is the result. Even though Pokemon Go has only the tiniest fraction of the features we envisioned for this MMO. Even though we have to live that reality through a two dimensional screen rather than in the Matrix like we would've preferred. Even though the majority of the time there are issues and we can't get access. Even though it takes way to long to grind up. Even though the experience is a grind rather than an adventure.

If you tap into a human's imagination, find out what they have wanted and promise "that is where we are headed!", you could release almost any resemblance to it and have that human hooked. If you find a product like this which targets multiple generations of humans, then you're golden.

Even look at other games like Dwarf Fortress. People put up with huge UX issues inorder to stimulate their childhood Lord of the Rings fantasies. The same with World of Warcraft when it came out.

Pretty much sums up everything.

Ahh, good point. I neglected the "Star Citizen" effect.

> And, worst of all, they took a beloved franchise and essentially gutted it, which is a huge disappointment to everyone who's loved Pokemon since the '90s.

So like every other non-core Pokémon game? People forget almost every non-core game aside from Stadium has bombed or gone unnoticed.

I'm not worried about Nintendo as much as I am worried about Niantic. Nintendo will make tons of money again this year with Sun and Moon and I am sort of suspicious GO will get that game a couple more sales (I personally will get it because of GO bringing back my interest). It seems Nintendo can release and re-lease anything Pokémon related and make a profit. They recently put the original three games (Red, Blue, and Yellow) on the 3DS virtual store with the ability to transfer your Pokémon from there to Sun and Moon (crazy!) and probably made some good money even if that cost almost nothing to do.

Niantic is the company that has something to prove and the way they handle the new few months will be crucial.

> People forget almost every non-core game aside from Stadium has bombed or gone unnoticed.

Really? Pokemon Mystery Dungeon appears to be on its 6th game.

It's also a total bore if you live in a rural area.

This is true, and distinguishes it from most videogames (which are, of course, geographically agnostic).

This is a symptom of the fact that the current gameplay is completely antithetical to the marketing of the game. I live in a urban area and walk about 5 miles a day with very little variety to the game as well. I'm realizing this game isn't designed around walking and exploring, it's designed around sitting at dense clusters of pokestops with other players.

If you want to experience the variety of pokemon this game offers, you're incentivized to sit and stay.

> From a gamer's perspective, Pokemon Go has been a disaster so far.

Not at all. It is a similar experience to the launch of any MMO game. Any gamer will recognize the symptoms and wait a bit. As for casual gamers, they are casually playing it and barely notice the issues. They play the game one hour a day. If one day the app is not working they simply do something else and try the next day. I have not experienced downtimes that lasted more than one day.

In my small town, there is still hundred of people playing. When I go to the public area I can see kids running around playing with teenagers and adults along with some elderly.

To be honest, I have never seen this town so alive. Normally this area would be almost empty. I would go there to play music on the public benches because I knew that I would not be disturbed. This week the place was filled with people every day.

It is EXACTLY the launch of a new MMO. If you've played WoW on the launch day of a new expansion, very little actually works. Servers are overloaded, there are too many players, basic bugs break core mechanics. The spikes are just too extreme to handle. That being said, everyone sees the new content for the first time, and recognizes its potential. You get to explore a whole new world, surrounded by TONS of people.

The only difference is pokemon go is in the real world. And that is an insane difference.

> If you've played WoW on the launch day of a new expansion, very little actually works. Servers are overloaded, there are too many players, basic bugs break core mechanics. The spikes are just too extreme to handle.

I have played WoW on the launch day of a new expansion -- in 2010. I experienced a single problem: mob respawn times appeared to decrease as the population of a zone increased, which meant that it was nearly impossible to complete certain quests because the mob respawn time was only a couple of seconds. (The particular quest I'm thinking of involved looting something the mobs dropped, which used a timed progress bar and was interrupted (and canceled) if you took a hit while looting.)

When was the last time you played WoW on an expansion launch?

Wow I'm surprised! 2010 was cata, the only launch I played during was pandara, and it was an absolute mess. I found some numbers and it looks like player count was lower for panda. But I remember tens (hundreds?) of people standing in the same spot because a quest npc had bugged out.

I think mobs is a regular problem, and good for Pokemon for making other people's capture not make a pokemon disappear which effectively solved any mob spawning problems.

I'm pretty sure that Nintendo's recent problems are largely due to them releasing a console that didn't have a lot of great games.

They have a new console on the way, and if they avoid those mistakes this time they'll do well. The new Zelda game looks wonderful.

Nintendo is highly dependent on its first party games. They can only crank so many of them out at any time. Third party developers seem to prefer ps4 and XB1.

That's true enough; there's still bad blood between Nintendo and most third-party developers, over how controlling Nintendo was back in NES and SNES days. But at least Nintendo has a very strong identity from its first-party IPs...

If I'm not mistaken, third party developers prefer the other platforms because there are fewer restrictions, both in terms of hardware power (which Nintendo consoles at least since the Wii have lacked in comparison with competitors), and content (where Nintendo wanted to cultivate a more family friendly reputation).

It's relatively easy to write a game that will run on PC, Xbox and PS4. At a high level, they're very similar platforms. The Wii U is a very odd duck. At the very least, they have to address the touch screen at least minimally.

So I'm sure most developers decide the Wii U just isn't worth the effort.

Not many great games, and terrible branding. I know people who STILL believe the Wii "U" is just a standard Wii and the tablet controller is called the "U", and don't understand that it's an entirely different console.

Ecosystem changes are only deadly to a company if they don't adapt to them.

Before videogames, Nintendo made playing cards. The console-locked model has been profitable for them for decades, but I wouldn't cash my chips out on them failing to make the roll to mobile just yet.

If Pokemon Go succeeded in one thing it was validating the value of Nintendo's IP. People clearly want Nintendo products on iOS and Android and there's a much larger market for Nintendo outside their first-party devices.

This is what the article thesis should have been:

Nintendo's used to be a hardware company that also created some amazingly valuable software. Today, their biggest asset is their IP around some of the most valuable gaming franchises in the world -- Pokemon, the Mario universe, and Zelda are the big three IMO.

Unfortunately, Nintendo can't seem to figure out how to make insane amount of money from this IP without losing tons of money on failed hardware projects.

The author claims that porting Pokemon gameboy games to mobile would only be a bandaid, but even if that doesn't "save" Nintendo, I think it would actually be a massive boon and sorely needed culture shift for the company. There are great memes online around "Mario Kart Go", but wouldn't "Mario Kart with Friends" (or random people online) be great?

The Zelda franchise, my one true love :), I'm not sure how to fix. I literally bought a Wii only to play Skyward Sword and will buy whatever system is needed for the next game, but i'm in the minority and that pattern is an indication of a terribly unhealthy hardware business hanging by a thread from their gaming IP.

I don't know! The company creates an alternate universe that needs a "Tricorder" to react with... What can go wrong? I could see Nintendo making phones now.

I guess you didn't read the article. Nintendo didn't create this alternate universe, a third party did.

And as a game it's terrible. What's compelling is how well it fits into the Pokemon story.

> "And as a game it's terrible."

Niantic/Nintendo could easily update the game to make it more engaging at the point interest starts to wane. For example, updating the game so you could take control in gym battles.

Easily? As an early Ingress player, experience shows that Niantic as a company are extermely slow to add features.

The UI for dealing with gameplay have always been terrible. You had to drop items one by one in Ingress for years until they finally made a capsule item.

There's no way to sort by pokemon type and no way to transfer all but a few of your weakest pokemon. They just seem not to care.

Good luck making the game actually fun...

> "Easily? As an early Ingress player, experience shows that Niantic as a company are extermely slow to add features."

Yes, easily. It's not as if the mechanics haven't already been worked out, they were there right from the Red/Green/Blue/Yellow era. All Niantic would be doing would be adding some buttons to the combat interface and adding some extra animations.

It took them over a year to add an an item-count label to your inventory in Ingress.

These are the same people who made rendering the UI layer dependent on responses from a server. Most of the promised features of the game are missing, many core features don't work, and with each update they've only further broken the app.

A competent company "could" probably add these features easily. I very much doubt Niantic can.

Its not a great game, but it is a great social app.

So Nintendo could take out Apple, Facebook, and a few dozen other 'high profile stalwarts' in a lot of variant spaces, if it only did the one thing you expect it to do, but everyone seems to be surprised they "haven't been doing very well lately", which is: make good hardware.

I read as much as wired allowed me too. (EFF Privacy Badger) and I know they used a third party but the lifeforms are the equity of their "alternate universe"

The point of the article is that we shouldn't accept this game as evidence that Nintendo has "figured out" mobile and will now get back to being a successful rather than struggling, out-of-touch company. This game was developed more-or-less in its entirety by a third party who then approached Nintendo and negotiated a license.

Nintendo just need to make a powerful system, powerful process lots or ram .. and a developer friendly sdk If they want to remain in the console business

I don't why they don't see the obvious

If Nintendo NX is not as powerful as the next playstation and the next xbox, this could only mean, Nintendo is getting out of the console system .. and targeting a new market

>Nintendo just need to make a powerful system, powerful process lots or ram .. and a developer friendly sdk If they want to remain in the console business

>I don't why they don't see the obvious

Because both of their biggest console/handheld successes did the exact opposite of that...

the opposite of what, i don't get it

>powerful system, powerful process lots or ram .. and a developer friendly sdk

The Wii is a souped up Gamecube, wasn't even full HD.

DS can only just barely manage 3D and it's about Nintendo 64 quality when it does. Far weaker than the original PSP that predates it.

no one cares

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