6 ms·

There's a common fallacy that happens frequently when Silicon Valley technologists start talking about Nintendo, and that is the idea that "their hardware can n

There's a common fallacy that happens frequently when Silicon Valley technologists start talking about Nintendo, and that is the idea that "their hardware can never compete with the ubiquity of mobile platforms, they should just become a software company and port their games to iOS and Android!" The success of Pokémon Go, and this new Mario game as well, is showing that Nintendo is taking a different strategy: they're creating custom-made mobile games for the purposes of driving attention and vigor to the main games on their hardware platforms. You can see this with Pokémon: the success of Pokémon Go has been driving sales of the 3DS and the currently-released Pokémon games, and will surely help bolster the hype for the next-generation games that are due out later this year. As far as strategy goes, these mobile games are more similar to the TV shows and movies Nintendo makes than the DS games they came from. I think this is a good strategy for them. An iPhone or Android will never be as tailor-made for gaming as the Gameboy or DS were, so it's good to see Nintendo sticking to their principles.

dyarosla 10y ago
I think its a great play by Nintendo to use mobile as a new conversion/user acquisition channel. I don't think we've seen any changes in the way Nintendo has been acquiring/marketing to new (non-previously-Nintendo-platform-owning) customers in the past 5 years. Putting their base IPs on popular mobile platforms is what appears to be their first modern approach at customer acquisition and will likely serve as a good upsell strategy to their hardware platforms.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  I wonder if this is going to become more of the norm, with companies putting out apps like Pokemon GO that use the brand image over top of a pretty basic app that's flashy but doesn't have much depth. It really is just an interactive ad for Nintendo's brand. <southpark_reference> I wonder if it even knows it's an ad? </southpark_reference>
Declanomous 10y ago
I agree with your sentiments. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up with touchscreens, but I find the controls on anything but the simplest games to be less intuitive on mobile than on a handheld device. It isn't that bad when you just need to tap somewhere, but when it comes to interacting with a control for any length of time, I much prefer to use a physical one rather than a virtual one. Holding B to sprint, or moving the directional pad or joystick quickly, works much better in the physical world. Perhaps phones are much better as gaming platforms than the typical UX design gives them credit for, but I can't imagine a phone replacing the sheer joy my Gameboy Color brought me when I was 8. I mean, the LCD on those things absolutely sucked, and being able to charge your battery is awesome, but a Gameboy is a complete experience. Nintendo is more Apple than PC -- that is to say Nintendo makes a complete product, where the design of the hardware plays as much in to the experience as the software. For instance, one of the most common complaints with Pokemon GO is that the game monopolizes your phone while you play it. You have to have the game running in the foreground of your phone with the screen on at all times. If you switch to take a call, or you switch to play some music, or use your GPS, or whatever, the game stops tracking your progress. By designing separate hardware, Nintendo is free to make decisions like that without upsetting people who (rightfully) expect apps to be able to share space on their phone. It's easy to compare Nintendo consoles to those produced by Sony and Microsoft and determine that Nintendo is losing the war, but in the end, Nintendo is creating an entire experience. Their methods are sometimes questionable (I'm looking at you, new Star Fox), but unlike Sony or Microsoft, they have created an ecosystem that depends on the unique features of their systems. The reasons I'd purchase a PS4 or a Xbone are 1) I want a platform exclusive game 2) I want to play with my friends who have the same console or 3) I want to be able to play multiplayer games more easily than I can on my PC. There is nothing on this list that a PC couldn't do if given the chance. On the other hand, Nintendo has done a lot of cool things with the Wii U. The wiimote and nunchuck actually works pretty well now that I've gotten used to it, and their platform exclusives use their hardware really well. I hung out with my 6 year old cousin all day on his birthday and played splatoon, which is a ton of fun, and makes really good use of the game pad and screen. The game pad is pretty sweet in general. Being able to play a game while other people are using the TV is pretty sweet. My friends and I will sit around watching sports, while one person builds a custom level for us to play in Smash Bros. Plus, it solves the issue of LAN Hacking, and allows one player to have information the other players can't see, which has been used to good effect in a few games and definitely has a lot of potential. Regardless, I think claims that this is the last generation of console-specific hardware are exaggerated in general. I think Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will still be producing consoles in ten years, just because the simplicity of a gaming appliance will always be appealing to people. Ensuring a phone or a computer is properly set up and specced to run a game will always be more than a large number of people want to deal with, especially as we get in to new technologies like VR and AR.
fit2rule 10y ago
One thing that I think really separates the discussion about Nintendo is the awareness/cluelessness about the fact that Nintendo have, in fact, have their hand in so much of Silicon Valley, already. I remember in the 90's, SGI and Nintendo shared a multiple of projects, hosted at the expansion offices at Oracle. The goal? Port Netscape to the N64, and so on. Nintendo are all over the place. Of course they have an iOS team already, duh. They worked with Creative Labs already, to develop competing frameworks to iOS, even before iOS 1.0 was released. All these things got cancelled/re-structured, and Nintendo still have a strong, forward-deployed, developer mentality. So, its not that they are not, actually, operating as a development group in our industry. Its just that they haven't "surfaced", yet, because their strategic deployment of co-development teams and integrated efforts doesn't, necessarily, mean that a product will bubble to the surface.
StavrosK 10y ago
Does Nintendo actually have a hand in Pokemon Go? I don't know what the relationship between Nintendo and the Pokemon Company is.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  They own a piece of The Pokemon Company and a piece of one of the companies that owns a piece of The Pokemon Company. No one really seems to know if that amounts to a controlling interest or not. But empirically, it seems unlikely an independent Pokemon Company wouldn't put out Pokemon games for non-Nintendo platforms.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Well, Pokemon Go is a non-Nintendo platform, so it could go either way (maybe Nintendo did it to increase the value of the franchise, maybe the Pokemon Company didn't do it more to avoid diluting it).
    - stormbrew 10y ago
      The announcement of Mario Run seems like a pretty clear indication that Nintendo has shifted, some time in the past, to thinking of phones as not competing with their consoles/handhelds. Pokemon Go and Mario Run may have begun development concurrently for all we know at this point.
  - jwcooper 10y ago
    They (along with Google and the Pokemon Company) also invested up to $30 million into Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go a year ago [1]. [1] http://www.recode.net/2015/10/15/11619616/nintendo-google-to-invest-up-to-30-million-in-niantic-maker-of-mobile http://www.recode.net/2015/10/15/11619616/nintendo-google-to...
eanzenberg 10y ago
It's a bit early to tell if the mobile Mario game will be successful. Remember the last real successful non-free mobile game was Angry Birds. Pokemon GO and this new game are entirely different because one is free-to-play and the other is not.
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  That's disappointing because the featured app store page where you can be notified says it has IAPs.
  - jamesgeck0 10y ago
    I've seen several people say that the app is a demo version with a single "unlock full game" IAP.
DarkTree 10y ago
In my personal experience, this strategy has worked remarkably. One morning my friend and I were out eating breakfast and discussing the Pokemon Go craze. Then we started talking about our childhood experiences with pokemon on the gameboy, and how we didn't know any of the pokemon after the second generation, so the new games would be completely novel to us. We got so nostalgic that we decided right then that after we paid our bill, we would go to the nearest BestBuy and get a nintendo 3DS and Pokemon X and Y, so we could relive those childhood days. That was a great week. And we will probably get Sun and Moon when it comes out. Before this, I had not bought a game since xbox/ps2, but I have no problem supporting a company that has given me so many countless memories (NES/gameboy/N64).
criddell 10y ago
> they're creating custom-made mobile games for the purposes of driving attention and vigor to the main games on their hardware platforms I'm not convinced that they are going to make more money that way. Time will tell, I guess.

dyarosla 10y ago

I think its a great play by Nintendo to use mobile as a new conversion/user acquisition channel. I don't think we've seen any changes in the way Nintendo has been acquiring/marketing to new (non-previously-Nintendo-platform-owning) customers in the past 5 years. Putting their base IPs on popular mobile platforms is what appears to be their first modern approach at customer acquisition and will likely serve as a good upsell strategy to their hardware platforms.

Benjammer 10y ago
I wonder if this is going to become more of the norm, with companies putting out apps like Pokemon GO that use the brand image over top of a pretty basic app that's flashy but doesn't have much depth. It really is just an interactive ad for Nintendo's brand. <southpark_reference> I wonder if it even knows it's an ad? </southpark_reference>

Declanomous 10y ago

I agree with your sentiments. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up with touchscreens, but I find the controls on anything but the simplest games to be less intuitive on mobile than on a handheld device. It isn't that bad when you just need to tap somewhere, but when it comes to interacting with a control for any length of time, I much prefer to use a physical one rather than a virtual one. Holding B to sprint, or moving the directional pad or joystick quickly, works much better in the physical world. Perhaps phones are much better as gaming platforms than the typical UX design gives them credit for, but I can't imagine a phone replacing the sheer joy my Gameboy Color brought me when I was 8. I mean, the LCD on those things absolutely sucked, and being able to charge your battery is awesome, but a Gameboy is a complete experience. Nintendo is more Apple than PC -- that is to say Nintendo makes a complete product, where the design of the hardware plays as much in to the experience as the software. For instance, one of the most common complaints with Pokemon GO is that the game monopolizes your phone while you play it. You have to have the game running in the foreground of your phone with the screen on at all times. If you switch to take a call, or you switch to play some music, or use your GPS, or whatever, the game stops tracking your progress. By designing separate hardware, Nintendo is free to make decisions like that without upsetting people who (rightfully) expect apps to be able to share space on their phone. It's easy to compare Nintendo consoles to those produced by Sony and Microsoft and determine that Nintendo is losing the war, but in the end, Nintendo is creating an entire experience. Their methods are sometimes questionable (I'm looking at you, new Star Fox), but unlike Sony or Microsoft, they have created an ecosystem that depends on the unique features of their systems. The reasons I'd purchase a PS4 or a Xbone are 1) I want a platform exclusive game 2) I want to play with my friends who have the same console or 3) I want to be able to play multiplayer games more easily than I can on my PC. There is nothing on this list that a PC couldn't do if given the chance. On the other hand, Nintendo has done a lot of cool things with the Wii U. The wiimote and nunchuck actually works pretty well now that I've gotten used to it, and their platform exclusives use their hardware really well. I hung out with my 6 year old cousin all day on his birthday and played splatoon, which is a ton of fun, and makes really good use of the game pad and screen. The game pad is pretty sweet in general. Being able to play a game while other people are using the TV is pretty sweet. My friends and I will sit around watching sports, while one person builds a custom level for us to play in Smash Bros. Plus, it solves the issue of LAN Hacking, and allows one player to have information the other players can't see, which has been used to good effect in a few games and definitely has a lot of potential. Regardless, I think claims that this is the last generation of console-specific hardware are exaggerated in general. I think Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will still be producing consoles in ten years, just because the simplicity of a gaming appliance will always be appealing to people. Ensuring a phone or a computer is properly set up and specced to run a game will always be more than a large number of people want to deal with, especially as we get in to new technologies like VR and AR.

fit2rule 10y ago

One thing that I think really separates the discussion about Nintendo is the awareness/cluelessness about the fact that Nintendo have, in fact, have their hand in so much of Silicon Valley, already. I remember in the 90's, SGI and Nintendo shared a multiple of projects, hosted at the expansion offices at Oracle. The goal? Port Netscape to the N64, and so on. Nintendo are all over the place. Of course they have an iOS team already, duh. They worked with Creative Labs already, to develop competing frameworks to iOS, even before iOS 1.0 was released. All these things got cancelled/re-structured, and Nintendo still have a strong, forward-deployed, developer mentality. So, its not that they are not, actually, operating as a development group in our industry. Its just that they haven't "surfaced", yet, because their strategic deployment of co-development teams and integrated efforts doesn't, necessarily, mean that a product will bubble to the surface.

StavrosK 10y ago

Does Nintendo actually have a hand in Pokemon Go? I don't know what the relationship between Nintendo and the Pokemon Company is.

stormbrew 10y ago
They own a piece of The Pokemon Company and a piece of one of the companies that owns a piece of The Pokemon Company. No one really seems to know if that amounts to a controlling interest or not. But empirically, it seems unlikely an independent Pokemon Company wouldn't put out Pokemon games for non-Nintendo platforms.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Well, Pokemon Go is a non-Nintendo platform, so it could go either way (maybe Nintendo did it to increase the value of the franchise, maybe the Pokemon Company didn't do it more to avoid diluting it).
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    The announcement of Mario Run seems like a pretty clear indication that Nintendo has shifted, some time in the past, to thinking of phones as not competing with their consoles/handhelds. Pokemon Go and Mario Run may have begun development concurrently for all we know at this point.
- jwcooper 10y ago
  They (along with Google and the Pokemon Company) also invested up to $30 million into Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go a year ago [1]. [1] http://www.recode.net/2015/10/15/11619616/nintendo-google-to-invest-up-to-30-million-in-niantic-maker-of-mobile http://www.recode.net/2015/10/15/11619616/nintendo-google-to...

eanzenberg 10y ago

It's a bit early to tell if the mobile Mario game will be successful. Remember the last real successful non-free mobile game was Angry Birds. Pokemon GO and this new game are entirely different because one is free-to-play and the other is not.

mcintyre1994 10y ago
That's disappointing because the featured app store page where you can be notified says it has IAPs.
- jamesgeck0 10y ago
  I've seen several people say that the app is a demo version with a single "unlock full game" IAP.

DarkTree 10y ago

In my personal experience, this strategy has worked remarkably. One morning my friend and I were out eating breakfast and discussing the Pokemon Go craze. Then we started talking about our childhood experiences with pokemon on the gameboy, and how we didn't know any of the pokemon after the second generation, so the new games would be completely novel to us. We got so nostalgic that we decided right then that after we paid our bill, we would go to the nearest BestBuy and get a nintendo 3DS and Pokemon X and Y, so we could relive those childhood days. That was a great week. And we will probably get Sun and Moon when it comes out. Before this, I had not bought a game since xbox/ps2, but I have no problem supporting a company that has given me so many countless memories (NES/gameboy/N64).

criddell 10y ago

> they're creating custom-made mobile games for the purposes of driving attention and vigor to the main games on their hardware platforms I'm not convinced that they are going to make more money that way. Time will tell, I guess.