Pokemon has managed to find the kind of popularity it used to enjoy 20 years ago yet again thanks to the success and popularity of Pokemon GO, the smartphone translation of the franchise’s popular monster collection formula. But just because Pokemon GO is a big deal doesn’t mean that you should expect mainline Pokemon games on your iPhone any time soon.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal (via Nintendo Life), Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara admitted that the chances of seeing a mainline Pokemon game on smartphones were slim to none- because simply porting an existing formula to a new system wouldn’t work.
“The chance of finding success in taking a product made for one platform and bringing it over to another is quite low,” he said.
Specifically talking about Pokemon Sun/Moon, and the mainline Pokemon games, he noted that they were a deeper experience than one could expect from a smartphone game. “When it comes to really spending a lot of time on a game, I think the experience is similar to reading a novel or watching a movie,” he said.
I do agree with him on the whole- Pokemon GO took off like it did because it was a game targeted specifically at smartphones. Simply taking existing Pokemon games and putting them on smartphones would still have netted success, but not to this degree.
So there is room for Pokemon on both, smartphones and handhelds- and they will both provide two very distinct flavors of Pokemon, too.