With Pokémon Go, Nintendo is Showing that it Takes Mobile Seriously

(The Verge) – Ever since Nintendo announced that it would be getting into mobile games, we’ve all wondered just what that might look like; would it mean traditional, Nintendo-quality games on a smartphone, or just quick free-to-play diversions starring Mario and Luigi? We still don’t know exactly what to expect from the first game between Nintendo and its mobile partner DeNA, but after the surprise announcement of Pokémon Go we know at least two things: Nintendo is taking mobile seriously, and it’s open to some pretty wild ideas.

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game made in collaboration between Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and Niantic Labs, the studio behind Google’s AR game Ingress. In Go, players can travel to real-world locations to catch, train, and battle Pokémon — sort of like that Google April Fools’ Day joke from last year, only real. Niantic will be making the game, with a lot of input from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company; Junichi Masuda, director of the Pokémon games, will be contributing to the project. “He is hard at work ensuring that the fun of Pokémon makes its way into this new project,” the Pokémon Company said in a statement, “and is also looking to come up with new kinds of gameplay while thinking of ways to connect this project with the main series of Pokémon video games.”

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