I can see this being potentially very fruitful and helping to drive the sales of Nintendo hardware. I'm actually very surprised it took this long. Nintendo gam

I can see this being potentially very fruitful and helping to drive the sales of Nintendo hardware. I'm actually very surprised it took this long. Nintendo games have long had ancillary hardware devices that are essentially meant to be "more mobile than the console", in that the console is intended for longer periods of interaction, whereas ancillary devices are meant for shorter use. An example is the PokeWalker[0], which itself had many predecessors as far back as the second generation of Pokemon games (late 90s). Now that kids already have smartphones, they don't need to be carrying around a cheap piece of plastic clipped to their belt in order to get this sort of experience. If Nintendo integrates the console games with smartphone apps that supplement (but do not replace) the main games, this could be a real boost for them. Also, look at existing game mechanics such as StreetPass[1]. It's almost laughable that people are still using devices that aren't smartphones to measure steps or handle near-field communication. This is long overdue, but better late than never! I use Pokemon as an example because it's the most successful game franchise they have, so they tend to take advantage of Nintendo's full range of game mechanics much more than other series. It's also about 20 years old at this point, so it's possible to use the series to track how the Nintendo platforms have evolved over the years. Interestingly, one of the Pokemon creators mentioned recently (last year or two) in an interview that they've consciously made the most recent generation of games much easier, because kids are interacting with games for much shorter periods of time, and they have to compete with games like Angry Birds for kids' attention. [0] http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9walker http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9walker [1] http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-omega-ruby-alpha-sapphire/StreetPass_Features http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-omega-ruby-alpha-sapphire/S...