Topic: Dear Nintendo - Bring Pokemon games on PC/Steam please!

Nope, they need to do the opposite. Pokemon needs to start tanking in sales, as the series has become incredibly complacent.

My hope is that soon, the main Pokemon game falls down to 7-8 million total sales, forcing Game Freak to breathe new life into what has essentially become a "training and battling simulator"

1) Pokemon sells hardware like nothing else on earth.
2) Steam takes a 30% cut of software sales.

So no.

What does it matter that steam will get the 30%? It will finally have an extremely big income from PC with the millions who will instantly buy all Pokemon games - hell even bigger than their Nintendo income so steam taking the 30% of their PC sales means nothing at all they still gain at the end

@DoflamingoGT: Just like how the Witness is the most pirated game this week? Yeah, I think Nintendo and TPC might not like that. They're system sellers, the games don't just sell games, they sell hardware as well.

@iKhan: well it says something that your hope is even less likely to come true than the OP's. There's a reason why none of the main entires, including remakes and so-called 'sister' games, have come nowhere near dropping significantly below 10 million. It's got one of the most passionate fanbases and also doesn't need to worry about attracting newcomers, as, speaking from experience, once a 'new' Pokemon game is announced, it becomes the hot-topic of classrooms in schools up and down the country (at least where I am in the UK), and well thus begins the rush of parents buying Pokemon games they know nothing about, so the quality or amount of new ideas doesn't come into consideration for either of Pokemon's main audiences. The fanbase are usually overwhelmingly happy regardless of the new ideas and the new kids who get their parents to buy it for them don't care/know either. So best bet for you is to give up hoping, as it ain't happening.

Which is why both of my points are important. Pokemon games sell Nintendo's own hardware at a remarkable rate. Pokemon sales this generation are on par with previous, even though the DS outsold the 3DS by nearly 3x. That says that the retention of the fanbase is incredible. Even though sales of the hardware are way down, people are still buying the hardware to play Pokemon at the same rate. There are still "millions" who will instantly buy all Pokemon games without Nintendo needing to give up their most successful killer app.

They sell the 3DS for $200, the game for $40. Compared to Steam, where they would take $28 on each software sale. You're looking at Steam sales that would need to be around 8.5x as high as 3DS. Pokemon X/Y are on track to pass 15 million sales on 3DS. Do you really expect that it would sell 127 million copies on Steam? Keep in mind that this would make it the best selling video game of all time by a huge margin. Wii Sports was a pack-in game for Wii and sold 82 million.

I'm exaggerating quite a bit to illustrate a point. Obviously, the software isn't selling the hardware at a 1:1 ratio and profitability is an important consideration too. But the point is that the Steam sales would need to be so monumentally massive, dwarfing the 3DS sales by a tremendous margin, that no, it's not a wise investment for the Pokemon Company. As long as people are willing to buy Nintendo's $200 hardware to play their $40 game, they stand to gain nothing from putting it on someone else's store and paying a licensing fee.

Look at EA. They don't even make their own hardware and still don't sell their own games through Steam anymore. They sell them through their own store, Origin. That 30% fee is nothing to shake a stick at. Any company with the audience and leverage to curate their own content are likely to opt to do so.

@CaviarMeths: Plus you've got to consider that if (a mighty, might big if) a Pokemon game was announced on Steam, an overwhelming majority of people would turn the other cheek at it if it looked/played in a similar way to how it has been operating for the last say 10 years at least. They may get away with possibly one main new 'rehash' because of the novelty of Pokemon being on PC, but after that people would want it to be the best thing since sliced bread. An MMO, 1080p, 60FPS, all regions to explore in a seamless open world, VR support and so on. Game Freak haven't made a game anywhere near that demanding, so it would have to be outsourced, and that in itself is a massive contractual problem considering Game Freak are the contracted developers of main Pokemon games at this moment.

Not even considering the budget such a game would require, how it would alienate a massive amount of the fanbase that loves Pokemon as it is right now including how it is easily accessible for a younger audience, and the fact that that is a competitive market that already has longstanding games that have a monopoly on the concept (WOW being the most obvious). If even WOW can suffer problems in maintaining longevity on PC (which it undoubtably has) what chance has this hypothetical Pokemon game got?

It's the same principle as to why Nintendo going 3rd party is a bad idea. Fire Emblem, Metroid, F-Zero, Pikmin, Star Fox, Mother, Kid Icarus, Xenobalde and more would all die after the first flop they have. There's too much competition to allow for an Other M situation to happen and get away with it if they were 3rd party. The only reason Fire Emblem survived as long as it did is because it was a first party franchise on consoles with not much competition in its genre. Put it on Steam/PS/Xbox and it even reaching Awakening (the best selling so far) numbers would be an astronomical flop. I could go on.

If people knew what they were talking about threads like this wouldn't exist.

@TheLastLugia Actually, smaller budget and indie games have a pretty good audience on Steam. Recently, Undertale was made by one guy and went on to sell over a million copies on Steam. Not everything needs to be a huge AAA game to do well.

@CaviarMeths: I'm well aware, but Pokemon has the gravitas and potential for it to be turned into a mainstream big budget game, and if it is made available to those audiences, it will become an expectation rather than the dream it currently is by being a handheld series aimed at kids. I just don't envisage Nintendo's theoretical passage into 3rd party being as smooth as people imagine it would be. They keep yapping on about Pokemon on Steam and Zelda/Mario on PS/Xbox but I see very, very few positives in such a move. These are the same people who are praising the- from an artistic and originality point of view- terrible Unreal engine tech demos of Pokemon, Zelda and Mario that one guy has done, going so far as to say that Nintendo are holding these series back. I'm sorry but if Nintendo/The Pokemon Company have to cater to these sorts of people then these series will die at least in my eyes, when things like Wind Waker and Super Mario Galaxy become known as 'holding back' games because they don't have 'dem next-gen grafix' as opposed to artisticly barren Unreal engine games then that's when things become far, far worse than they supposedly are now. At least from what k think these games stand for.

Wanna play pokemon? Buy a Nintendo system. It's not rocket science

Yep, the Pokemon fanbase is full of sheep Mareep that just take whatever GameFreak puts out.

I don't really have much of a hope that my wish will happen, but it's still there in the back of my head.

It's probably safe to blame the Genwunners (and on-again, off-again players) who do not consistently support the series. Thanks to a new 3D engine and a good deal of pandering to Genwunners, Game Freak were able to lure some of them back via Pokémon X or Y, but I'm confident that many of them didn't stick around for OR/AS (I know at least a few people that I never would of thought would buy a 3DS who ended up buying one purely for X/Y. One is still playing with his 3DS, another has all but abandoned it).

I want the series to move forward, and while it does take me some time to get used to any new monsters, I do embrace them, if not right away, and I do not dismiss them on the basis of "oh, the old ones are better." People merely say they want the series to move forward, but even the mildest change divides people. For example, many were dismissive of the "Fairy" type. I think it's fantastic and long overdue, but… people will Birch and Oak… and as unpleasant as they are about this hobby, it is still in Game Freak's interest to appeal to them. I want GF to ditch the established structure of the main series games and strive for something totally different (while still including a storyline that allows the player's Pokémon to consistently grow throughout the adventure), but it seems unlikely that it will happen, at least anytime soon.

I thought that had already happened with Black 2 and White 2. The sales were underwhelming from what I remember (around 7-8 million worldwide). I could be wrong though, but it was certainly only a fraction of Black/White's sales.

Nevertheless, those sales are nothing to scoff at. Game Freak recycled assets from an already best-selling game to make another best-selling game. Black 2/White 2 would have cost them very little to make considering.

I think the problem people have with Pokemon is it serves too many masters. It is a series that has to please so many fans, all with different interest, that it makes it difficult for them to move too far away in one direction. Many people want more involved stories, but a Pokemon collector won't like that. Some people want more interactive fighting mechanics, but that would take away from its strategic elements and make it more difficult to target all the different ages. The Pokemon Main series is in a good spot with how different of an experience each player wants/gets and the best place for Pokemon to try something new is in the spin-offs. I know I would be interested in a more guided spin-off that followed Ash's adventures from the series more closely, but that would be terrible for others that don't have interest in the show or want more customization over their character/pokemon than that would offer. Saying the main series needs to seriously change is like saying Halo needs to seriously change since it isn't the type of shooter you enjoy. Maybe the series just isn't meant for you and you should move onto something instead of ruining what others like.... just my two cents.

I agree with both of you above, TPC have enough on their plate in trying to appease their current fans whilst at the same time keeping the bar for entry low enough for the new kids that this thread was kinda pointless in the first place. I'm personally excited each time a new game is announced, as there are often more than enough changes to be excited about.

I wouldn't call those people "genwunners". I've spoken to several people who hate the original two generations, but they are incredibly uncomfortable with Pokemon deviating from it's 6 generation old style.

I agree with you, Pokemon is INCREDIBLY hindered by it's structure. The battle system is fine, and every new iteration brings fresh new changes, but the games have changed to the point that the old structure does a terrible job of facilitating what they need to do. They literally just do it for tradition's sake. It worked for Gen 1 and Gen 2, because those games were not about a story, but instead were about sending the player on an adventure of their own. Newer games take a much more "Level-5-esque" approach, putting players on a linear quest through a story. The problem is that unlike Ni No Kuni, which had an intriguing story and interesting characters, Pokemon is still relatively devoid of story and characterization.

Even if they were to go back to the "personal adventure" route, a game's structure needs to change over time, rather than feeling they just put out the same game with updated content. It doesn't have to be Zelda or Final Fantasy levels of different, but something closer to the variation between entries in the Tales of series would be nice.