291–300 of 342 posts
It's difficult to escape the feeling that Nintendo is not exactly central to the success of Pokémon Go, and that the 7BB increase in market cap is. . . excessive. Fact is, this game is the work of a small VC-backed game shop in San Francisco with some great talent. They license the Pokémon characters, which are owned by The Pokémon Company, which is minority owned by Nintendo.
I'm surprised there's so little talk about privacy and nuisance implications of this. We've had a large number of "suspicious behavior" reported in our neighborhood in the past week - and, honestly, it really is suspicious, as in people crawling through the bushes on private property at dusk snapping pictures with cellphones; you know, the kind of stuff that would normally make you go "hmm, I wonder if this house get…
The data and methodology is pretty suspect here -- Google for Pokémon Go reports 5m-10m installs while Tinder is reported to have 50m to 100m installs. This is an order of magnitude more worldwide installs. I think the 'current data' is being heavily weighted and producing a too sensational of an article. For Tinder, about 25% of it's installs came from the US on Android. That still puts it at 12.5m - 25m Android ins…
It's difficult to escape the feeling that Nintendo is not exactly central to the success of Pokémon Go, and that the 7BB increase in market cap is. . . excessive. Fact is, this game is the work of a small VC-backed game shop in San Francisco with some great talent. They license the Pokémon characters, which are owned by The Pokémon Company, which is minority owned by Nintendo.
Nintendo is also an investor in Niantic Labs. If you think the price is high, you're welcome to short it.
Ignoring the comparison with Twitter for a moment, this shows that Nintendo's mobile strategy has been woefully slow. They've been ignoring a huge market segment to try to shift hardware instead, and this toe in the water shows that a lot of people are interested in playing their games but not necessarily buying their consoles. I'd argue this means their business needs to change dramatically - away from their own har…
The approach of Sega, Capcom, and Konami was to pivot from traditional games into money farms, and that sowed a lot of ill will among their fans.
Try playing Sonic Runners. It's sort of okay for a while, then it hits the wall of "spend money or be forever in grindy hell". It's like a stripper who's very friendly with you for 30 seconds, then starts asking for money to keep being friendly.
If Nintendo did that, it would take a power dump all over their brand. So they're playing it safe and taking a more measured approach to mobile.
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Tetris wasn't that big before the Gameboy version. It was "big" in the tiny new computer/tech world, but it was gameboy which brought it into the mainstream.
The difference is that smartphones have a lot higher penetration than Gameboys did.
Now, the adult mobile gaming market is saturated.
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I will never buy any in App Coin, but I have a lot of consoles + games from nintendo. Even the 'New 3DS'.
Pokemon Go has a really interesting mechanic for this - one of the in app purchases you can buy is for a 'Lure' that you can place in your physical area (in game) that attracts Pokemon for all people in the area. So not only are you helping yourself, you're helping others around you. In our office, we take turns on placing them to help everyone out.
One of the smarter ideas I've seen today - a local pub noticed they were getting increased traffic from players due to being close to both a gym and Pokestop. They mentioned in media interviews that they might permanently fund a lure in the Pokestop as a way to attract more players to the pub & offer them discounts on purchases if they mention the game. That sounds like a potential business model...
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I will never buy any in App Coin, but I have a lot of consoles + games from nintendo. Even the 'New 3DS'.
why? do you also refuse to put quarters in arcade machines?
This is not to say that there can't be good free-to-play games with IAP, but the vast majority of the payment models is terrible in game quality (not talking about success). I honestly have a hard time coming up with a good example of an app, but in the PC space, excellent examples of quality free-to-play meets success is TF2 and Dota 2 where you can't buy an advantage yet they are hugely profitable.
I've spent at least 200 bucks on dota 2, and regret nothing. I have yet to spend any money on IAP in apps simply because I haven't seen any implementation I find acceptable.
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free to play, with no gameplay restrictions is an excellent model. when you can then do IAP to get "extras", it's a great "pay what you feel it is worth" type model. another mobile game, Vainglory, does this with currency to unlock heros and skins. you can play the game to earn currency to get them, or just purchase outright.
Also works well in CS:GO. The skins add nothing to the actual game play, yet people like the value they add. Just a shame that it brings kids into a gambling state of mind. Would've been nicer if you could just buy them outright.
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Pokemon Go has a really interesting mechanic for this - one of the in app purchases you can buy is for a 'Lure' that you can place in your physical area (in game) that attracts Pokemon for all people in the area. So not only are you helping yourself, you're helping others around you. In our office, we take turns on placing them to help everyone out.
Something most people don't know either, you get 10 coins a day for each gym you have a Pokemon set up to defend (up to a maximum of 10 gyms) - giving you up to 100 free coins every day for just playing the game. And since you can't buy anything that you can't just get from a Pokestop either (and they are pretty common even in my suburban area, there's three on the ~15 minute walk to the convenience store down the st…
Based on what I've read and my own experience (including a month as a beta tester), this isn't quite accurate. There are a few items that can't be harvested, including incubators, lures, lucky eggs, and backpack upgrades. Those can only be purchased.