7 ms·

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

40 points by JackPoach 10y ago

SCAQTony 10y ago
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.
- chongli 10y ago
  I guess you didn't read the article. Nintendo didn't create this alternate universe, a third party did.
  - Retric 10y ago
    And as a game it's terrible. What's compelling is how well it fits into the Pokemon story.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      > "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.
      - gre 10y ago
        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...
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
        > "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.
      - squeaky-clean 10y ago
        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.
    - fit2rule 10y ago
      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.
  - SCAQTony 10y ago
    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"
    - chongli 10y ago
      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.
nedsma 10y ago
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.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > 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...
  - dasboth 10y ago
    "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.
    - Navarr 10y ago
      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 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.
SurrealSoul 10y ago
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
systems 10y ago
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
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  >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...
  - systems 10y ago
    the opposite of what, i don't get it
    - intoverflow2 10y ago
      >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.
lewisj489 10y ago
no one cares
fixermark 10y ago
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.
pwinnski 10y ago
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/ 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.
- markmarrk 10y ago
  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.
paublyrne 10y ago
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.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  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.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    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...
  - fluxquanta 10y ago
    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).
    - city41 10y ago
      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.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  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.
chasingtheflow 10y ago
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.
jaz46 10y ago
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.

40 points by JackPoach 10y ago

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.

chongli 10y ago
I guess you didn't read the article. Nintendo didn't create this alternate universe, a third party did.
- Retric 10y ago
  And as a game it's terrible. What's compelling is how well it fits into the Pokemon story.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "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.
    - gre 10y ago
      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...
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        > "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.
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      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.
  - fit2rule 10y ago
    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.
- SCAQTony 10y ago
  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"
  - chongli 10y ago
    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.

nedsma 10y ago

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.

gthtjtkt 10y ago
> 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...
- dasboth 10y ago
  "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.
  - Navarr 10y ago
    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 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.

SurrealSoul 10y ago

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

systems 10y ago

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

intoverflow2 10y ago
>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...
- systems 10y ago
  the opposite of what, i don't get it
  - intoverflow2 10y ago
    >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.

lewisj489 10y ago

no one cares

fixermark 10y ago

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.

pwinnski 10y ago

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/ 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.

markmarrk 10y ago
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.

paublyrne 10y ago

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.

samfisher83 10y ago
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.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  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...
- fluxquanta 10y ago
  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).
  - city41 10y ago
    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.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
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.

chasingtheflow 10y ago

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.

jaz46 10y ago

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.