http://m.ign.com/articles/1219443

Bleh, and here I am trying to build a hailstorm team.

i stopped following the games after saphire and ruby, but as far as i know there has never been a direct sequel. so that is kind of mind blowing. but i like the idea. i grew bored of pokemon because i got tired of spending 30 dollars on what is essentially the same game with different characters. although if there was ever a pokemon game that had ALL of the pokemon throughout the all previous titles i would buy that (and the DS of course)

I'd only be interested if they release it for the iOS. I'm never going to buy a handheld gaming device, it's a waste of money when my iPhone can do the job just as well. Why would I carry around an iPhone and a DS? It's just not practical. I'd buy the game full price if it was released on the iPhone and I'd buy plenty of other Nintendo games. They're really missing out, but I believe some day they'll pull a SEGA and get out of handheld hardware and focus on the software.

Thankfully, Nintendo will NEVER release Pokemon for iOS. What a horrid concept, Pokemon on iOS. Uhg.

I'm glad Nintendo will never cater to smartphone users. Smartphones may be capable of playing games, but they will never be as powerful at gaming as a dedicated portable gaming platform if just for one thing: optimization.

What would be bad about Pokemon on the iOS? All you have to do is hit a few buttons, it would actually work quite smoothly with a touch interface (as the Final Fantasy games do). They're missing out on millions in potential sales by ignoring the largest gaming audience in the industry.

They've been using the same formula since the beginning. I wonder why they decided to change it.

No they aren't. Anyone who cares for Pokemon games (or Nintendo games in general) owns a DS. You aren't their target market and they would actually lose profits by porting it to iOS. First they'd have to use Objective-C, the costs of porting to Objective-C and paying for the psychological therapy for the programmers is enough to make it a lose-lose, then they have to share profits with Apple, another lose, and then they don't get to flagship their own platform where they can generate revenue from, keep in-house costs down, and gain revenue from 3rd party developers as well. Then they lose out on optimization, which I already mentioned.

There's no advantage to it whatsoever. Nintendo would have to be complete idiots to do it. Hence why I'm glad they don't cater to smartphone users.


They didn't change anything. It's just a rumor that it'll be a direct sequel.

however the whole reason why pokemon exists any more IS to sell the handheld platform, usually if any new generation comes out there is a pokemon game to go with it. i do not think there would be any thing wrong with having it on a iphone or whatever (i think it would be dumb to sign a contract for one only to play pokemon)

however Nintendo is not lossing any potential sales by ignoring ios and gaming phones (i disagree with them being the largest gaming audience, i would call it quite the opposite in fact but that is besides the point), the reason is that nintendo are not the developers of Pokemon, there fore how well Pokemon has no direct economic impact on them. nintendo however does develop the game boy, and naturally would desire to sell more of them, by which they have a mutual relationship with the developers of pokemon. If pokemon were to be sold on any non-nintendo platform, they would not make any money from their own product being sold, therefore ninetendo would never agree to distribute or publish a pokemon game that they don't have exclusivity towards.


Edit: Defron Ninja'd me: :sigh:

I am excite! Kyurem needs something to make it awesome besides it's looks and typing.

Nevertheless, won't there be two games?

I was expecting the usual color variant.

Good points, and don't mean to take away from it, but I'd like to point out one detail that's a little lost in your explanation: Nintendo doesn't develop Pokemon games, but the developer, Game Freak, is pretty much a company in name only. Nintendo owns pretty much all the trademarks and licensing rights for Pokemon.

" Pokémon, Pokémon character names, Nintendo DS, Wii, and Wiiware are trademarks of Nintendo." http://www.pokemon.com/us/about/legal/

Game Freak couldn't release Pokemon on any other platform even if they wanted to, at least not without Nintendo's permission.

The iPhone / cell phone market is the largest gaming market by a landslide. There are more iPhones and people buying iPhone games than all of the gaming platforms combined.

They are missing out by not making games for it, there's no way to dance around that fact.

A resounding meh has been given this day. Black and White was good, and I like how they tried to really push the series. But it's not enough, they need to do something amazing to draw me back in full time. They also need to cut down some of the grinding. At least by half, I just want to get on with the games. Though I could be convinced to play if they cut it down by a quarter, too much work for too little payoff.

No there aren't, which can be proven by your own argument: Android outnumber iPhones. As to cellphones in general: there's too much fragmentation and only just recently have smart phone outnumbered regular phone ONLY IN THE US, not worldwide. There's no way to release DS games on regular phones, the fragmentation of smartphones would make it many times more expensive to release for them all compared to their own platform, and they couldn't make their game run on all phones of even the same OS (see: RockStar not allowing original and second gen iPhones to play their games)

They aren't missing out either because they can't make the profits on the iPhone they can on their own platform, lose out in optimization, and lose independence. There's absolutely nothing to win about switching to developing to the iPhone when virtually all the people who like Nintendo games have Nintendo's platform.

You're the odd man out, not the rule, as much as you seem to want to be the rule. Nintendo would be idiots to release for the iPhone instead of their own platform.

I'm sorry, but you're the one wrong, simply because you lack an understanding of mobile phone gaming, app revenue sharing, the differences between different programming langauges, the differences between different SoCs, and the idea of optimization.... Basically everything that is of any importance when talking about mobile game development.

They would profit more on iPhone games. They would not have to make anything physical, no cartridge, no case. They would not have to pay to ship the games to stores (not to mention pay workers to make the games, pay drivers to ship the games, and pay for warehouse space to store the games).

Stores take a cut of game sales too, do you think Gamestop sells DS games and doesn't take a profit?

I'd be willing to bet more iPhone games sold in the last year alone than all of the DS games ever.

Also it would not be very hard to release games on different mobile platforms, they do it already with games like Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto.

You can think whatever you want, I'm going to the bar. I really could care less about Pokemon. Someday very soon mobile gaming as you know (in other words on devices made specifically for gaming) it will die completely, so hope you're prepared.

those games are generally less than 3 dollars. no one is going to spend $30 on a watered down pokemon app. and i don't think nintendo will be willing to sell pokemon for 3 dollars.

@defron, i was uncertain on whethor or not gamefreak was owned by ninetendo or not, i assumed that they were not however. Yet it makes alot of sense that ninetendo would have control over them, however were they always a satalite of nintendo or were they originally independant but nintendo bought them out because of the series ability to sell the game boy platform.

Why would it be watered down? The iPhone can run PS2 games. And People will pay full price for DS games, why wouldn't they for iPhone versions of those games? That argument makes no sense. I buy movies for my iPhone for $20+ all the time. I buy books for $15-30 on my iPhone. I've bought $15-20 games already. If you could play all the DS games and not have to spend $150 on a DS, why wouldn't you purchase the games for $30-50? Plenty of people would, while the enthusiasts could still buy their DS's. Win-win. I don't know why DS fans would be so butt hurt over people getting to enjoy the same games on the iOS. Fanboyism I guess.

Cost is always figured into the margin in which products are priced for retail. how much it costs nintendo to distribute their game they are always going to figure that amount directly into the price of the game and then add the margin of profit that they desire.

No serious corporation that directly generates a retail product will ever allow the base cost of the product get in the way of them making more money.

There's huge profits to be made in a media platform. This is why Apple released the iPhone and why Nintendo releases the DS.

You don't understand much about how markets work, do you?

You really don't understand much, do you? higher sales != higher income (read: iphone games are cheaper and the majority sold are catered to casual gaming, not like DS games)

You don't understand game release logistics, much, do you?

Let me put this in a simple way: http://i43.tinypic.com/23rqrmp.jpg

If I'm not mistaken, Apple takes a 30% cut on app sales. There's also nothing stopping Nintendo from benefiting from digital distribution on their own platforms, which appears to be exactly what they're doing seeing as all of the groundwork has been laid for retail games on the 3DS eShop.

well maybe i was full of [censored] when i said no one would pay $30 on a app, mostly because i think its insane to spend more than $10 dollars on a movie and never buy apps of any kind.

and i feel you when you say that you dislike the exclusivity. I hate exclusives because they hurt the developers, or at least thats what i believe (Although it appears that in gamefreaks case they have no detractors from nintendo's exclusivity). I don;t own a DS so i doubt im a fan boy.

You merely asked why Nintendo does not release pokemon for other platforms.

the short answer is that Nintendo would not make any money from it because they do not get money from retail, Stores like gamestop make the retail margin. and they would loose money from the number of sales in DS's becoming less because people no longer need to buy them to play pokemon.

Glad it's coming out on the DS and having this on IOS is not smart. Most of the customer base is within the nintendo range of products, a phone based system wouldn't work, not to mention that Nintendo hasn't tried that type of thing yet. I'm actually surprised that the 3DS argument isn't being brought up although I have a good idea as to why Nintendo is releasing it on the DS and not the 3DS and that's to connect BW1 with BW2 and have them both be on the same system. 6th gen will be on the 3DS although that will probably be another 2 years unless Gamefreak as a seperate team working on that game in addition to BW2.

I'd be surprised if nintendo hadn't yet considered making them for mobile phones especially seeing how that pokemon yellow remake scam app shot to like #2 in the app store in a day. Not their target market my hairy ass.

It's amazing the stuff people buy when it's only $0.99 instead of $40