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Really common occurrence with companies that find success by partnering with an IP they don't own. They find success, then they try another spin of the wheel s
by whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Really common occurrence with companies that find success by partnering with an IP they don't own.
They find success, then they try another spin of the wheel spreading out to another IP they don't own, convincing themselves that just because that IP has as much or even greater reach that the same thing will be replicated again and that the road to success is just capturing more and more markets by working with more IPs.
By the time their second partnership product is out, which probably was a lot more expensive to develop than the first, they probably already have a 3rd in the pipeline. Often this second product is received much worse than the first and the hope that "Harry Potter's market is X big compared to Pokemon so we're due to have a revenue of X from it" is completely crushed and the product is a fraction of the success of the last, this is where things start to go pear shaped, many companies at this point make the mistake of doubling down on even more IP partnership products to try and build up the revenue but the returns are all diminishing and at the end of the day you don't truly own your products and are stuck paying out large percentages to IP holders.
I worked in a startup in a field where every single one of our competitors and the company I worked at fell into this trap and maybe 1/4th made it out the other side.
I see they may have now figured out its a bad idea but only after what seems like 7 spins of the wheel (Pokemon, Harry Potter, Minecraft, Catan, Transformers, Pikmin, NBA) with diminishing returns. Because now they're developing their own IP which looks to be a Pokemon clone. This wont work out either really because their main customer base are not with them because they're Niantic, they're with them because of Pokemon so bootleg pokemon wont cut it.
Now as a thought exercise lets imagine if all those years ago they hadn't thought "Let's bring the Pokemon IP to the real world and smartphones and piggyback to success off it" and instead thought "Nintendo hasn't seen the potential of a Pokemon smartphone GPS game and have no presence on these platforms. Let's build the game that will be Pokemon for the next generation with this first mover advantage" and had Peridot as their second game, not their 10th".
Might not have done the numbers Pokemon Go did, but they'd own it completely, own the merchandising rights to it completely and over time you'd have a generation who grew up thinking "Pokemon? oh that's like Peridot isn't it"
- Semaphor 4y agoI hope that doesn’t happen with Owlcat. Their first two games were based on the Pathfinder TTRPG, their 3rd game will be based on the WH40k Rogue Trader TTRPG. But then both those IPs are probably crazy cheap to develop for in comparison to Pokémon.
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoPokémon is a weird one because you’re a game company licensing a game IP from one of the biggest and oldest game empires. Like really how hard would it be for Pokémon Company/Nintendo to replicate Pokemon Go on their own terms. Then there’s the other big hitters like you’d be shocked how much of your revenue of a Star Wars themed product evaporates on dumb things like you included the Star Wars music so have to pay the composer X per sale.
- philistine 4y agoYour insights are very good. A small data point I’ll add: Pokémon is the most profitable franchise ever. Nothing has made more money. Pokémon is a global phenomenon unrivalled in its ability to make money around the globe. So there was nowhere to go but down from Niantic. Harry Potter is not as strong in Asia.
- xiaolingxiao 4y agoSharp take. Dapper labs is having he same issue with nba, their license ended and now they’re scrambling to find the next nft thing. Could you speak about angry birds tho, they own their IP but havnt really had success after the mobile craze wore off. Is it even possible to have a prolonged media franchise, regardless of who owns it?
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoI mean they still own it right? There was a time you could buy any piece of tat in the world with that red birds face on it so because they own it the potential is always there to reboot it somehow. Think the only real misstep is they didn't worldbuild good enough, they're birds and they're angry, the pigs steal their eggs and thats kinda where it ends, good comparison might be Minions I mean the base minion characters are as shallow as Angry Birds but there is more elements/characters/stories of their world around that there will still be movies set in the minions world in 10 years from now. Although Angry Birds the glorified flash game made a lot of money, there just wasn't enough story and worldbuilding there to sustain a movie and a themepark. Think they should have been more ambitious with that side or even built out the rest of the world where Angry Birds is just one small part of it, like how Donkey Kong has his own games but he is also a subset of the Mario universe. Where Rovio is they could always do another reboot of the games or a live action edgy Angry Birds movie but Niantic is stuck, Pokemon Company holds all the cards and without Niantic Pokemon is still huge but without Pokemon Niantic is nothing.