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How can Pokemon Go influence
the videogame industry?
“Mobile is where the future of gaming lies.” said Hideki Hayakawa, chief executive of Konami, the Japanese game publisher that has been the steward for many beloved gaming franchises such as “Castlevania” and “Metal Gear Solid.” Little after saying this, he canceled the highly anticipated “Silent Hills” that was supposed to be launched in 2016 (a teaser and P.T. was launched in 2014), starring Norman Reedus and directed by Guillermo Del Toro.
Mobile-game development is a low-risk, low-cost enterprise, creating games for the most widely available gaming platform out there, the smartphone. And it’s a lucrative business, making up 85 percent of all mobile app revenue: $34.8 billion worldwide.
“Pokemon Go might be a fad or a craze” Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities gaming analyst, said. To see how this app can change the game industry, we should look at the last time Nintendo created a fad or a craze: the launch of the Nintendo Wii console.
According to the NPD Group, the Wii sold more units in the United States than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined in the first half of 2007. In December of 2007, Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that Nintendo was producing approximately 1.8 million Wii consoles each month. In 2007 the Wii was the second-best-selling game console (behind the Nintendo DS) in the US and Japan (with 6.29 million and 3,629,361 units sold respectively), according to the NPD Group and Enterbrain.
Microsoft and Sony (Xbox and Play Station respectively), realizing that they weren’t having as good Nintendo’s sales, decided to divert money from other potential projects to produce the Kinect and the Move. Microsoft poured a half-billion dollars into marketing the Kinect, a device that gamers not only rejected but that actively hurt the sales of the Xbox One console by driving up its cost. The PlayStation Move entered and left the market with relative obscurity.
Since the launch of the Nintendo Wii console, the company couldn’t deliver something that the public wanted as much as the Wii, so in the following years, Nintendo’s value declined in a 77%. However, since the release of Pokemon Go, the company has earned approximately $11 billion dollars, and the response of Microsoft and Sony will probably be the same as it was in 2007. Game developers shifting their focus to mobile, where the revenues are high and the risks are low.
Pokemon Go is not bad: it makes people outside and walk, when otherwise players would stay home. The problem resides in that gaming companies would develop trashy copycats rather than invest in high-quality titles, and I think that’s something they must have in consideration when they are about to launch the next blockbuster mobile-app.
MARIA LUZ MACARENA
Sources
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/07/13/why-pokemon-gos-huge-success-makes-me-fear-not-cheer-the-future-of-gaming/
http://qz.com/728399/pokemon-go-has-added-nearly-11-billion-to-the-value-of-nintendo-since-its-release/
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/nintendos-value-declined-77-in-five-years-cm192051
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/7974:JP