While the handheld/console hybrid remains a little way out still with Nintendo likely to release it in the first quarter of next year, The CEO of Pokémon Company has told Wall Street Journal that its company will be making games for Nintendo NX that we still don’t know all that much about.
Tsunekazu Ishihara who heads the Nintendo affiliate and licenses Pokémon characters confirmed in and interview with the Wall Street Journal that his company will be making games including Pokémon characters as well as “Pokémon Go” for the Nintendo NX. I don’t know many people that didn’t think this would be the case given the Pokémon Go’s huge following that has seen it downloaded over 500 million times since it’s release and immediate success in July of this year. That’s 500 million without the game being released to either South Korea or China which the company is very interested in doing.
The success of “Go” has also driven renewed interest and sales of other Pokémon properties.
“The NX is trying to change the concept of what it means to be a home console device or a hand-held device,” said Mr. Ishihara. “We will make games for the NX.”
When the Nintendo NX is released no later than March according to the company, it will be a console that uses a television as well as a portable gaming option for those that purchase Nintendo’s first offering of a gaming system since the Wii U. In the recent interview, Tsunekazu Ishihara did not say whether or not his company would have games ready immediately when Nintendo launches the NX officially.
“Pokémon Go” was produced by Pokémon Co, developed by Niantic Inc. which was once a property of Google and saw Nintendo’s stock soar somewhat strangely as Nintendo will not be the biggest recipeint of in-app sales that have reached $700 million according to an estimate by the research company App Annie though a number of estimates have a much lower number. That said, this number whatever it is grows each day as players continue to make purchases. Two of the biggest recipients of this revenue are Google and Apple who host the game in the Google Play Store and App Store repectively and while the game is free, the companies share in this revenue, and one estimate recently suggested that Apple could add well over a billion in the first year of simply hosting the free game.
The game itself was an immediate hit but did get some bad press as a few people crashed their cars playing, fell off cliffs, and were lured in to robberies.
At the risk of giving players just downloading the game to much too fast the company as said it will slowly add features to keep advanced players interested including player-to-player battles and character trades.
“Battling is a category that we do best at Pokémon, after all,” Mr. Ishihara said, but “it’s important to really carefully consider any feature that may increase the difficulty and raise the barrier to entry for more casual users.”
“I feel like the reaction we saw was 10 times or even 100 times bigger than we expected,” Mr. Ishihara said.
Google Maps remains limited in both South Korea and China and until that is adressed a release to those large markets will take time as “Pokémon Go” is buiit on the Google Maps.
