Pokemon Co. CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara admitted that the response to the popular mobile game Pokemon Go was much bigger than expected. Ishihara admitted this in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, where he also talked about more planned features for the game.
Pokemon Go pushing sales of Pokemon products
Ishihara told the WSJ, “I feel like the reaction we saw was 10 times or even 100 times bigger than we expected.”
Also Ishihara said that sales of other Pokémon products have increased because of the popularity of the game, and the gaming company hopes to bring Pokémon Go to South Korea and China. Sales of some Pokémon products like trading cards and Nintendo game software are 30% to 50% higher than usual as well, according to Ishihara.
Ishihara also told the media outlet that more features are planned for the popular game, including character trades and player-to-player battles. He added that these features will come slowly to prevent overwhelming entry-level players.
“Battling is a category that we do best at Pokémon, after all,” Ishihara said. “It’s important to really carefully consider any feature that may increase the difficulty and raise the barrier to entry for more casual users.”
Ishihara added that he wanted to expand the game in China, the world’s largest smartphone game market, but issues with maps prevented them from doing this. Pokémon Go is built on Google Maps, which has a limited presence in China and South Korea.
Nintendo NX: a new concept
During the interview, Ishihara also made a big revelation that they “will make games for the NX.” Also he gave some hints on what to expect from the Nintendo NX. Ishihara said that the Nintendo NX is attempting to change the concept of what it means to be a handheld device or a home console device. Nintendo has not confirmed anything in respect to the collaboration yet even after the comments by Ishihara.
Many started to give their own views after Ishihara dropped the big reveal. One guess was that it will be a handheld/home console hybrid that will let a player play games on the way home and then plug it into a dock when they get there. The collaboration between the developer of Pokemon Go, Niantic, and Nintendo will be a “brand new concept,” reported Pocket-lint.
Gamers can anticipate the launch of the Nintendo NX around September or October 2017. To enjoy Pokemon games on the Nintendo NX, many are speculating a wait until 2020.
