Pokemon Go非成功捷径，任天堂手游发展仍面临诸多挑战

原作者：Jared Newman 译者：Vivian Xue

在很多行业分析者的眼中，《精灵宝可梦Go》是任天堂重大转型的起点。

他们认为这个游戏的一夜成名让任天堂尝到了甜头，如果他们全身心投入到手游开发中，成功的潜力将不可估量。试想下任天堂把马里奥和赛亚达这样的IP搬上苹果和安卓将会对公司发展产生怎样的影响。股价飙升是可想而知的。

但是仔细寻思，这种说法是站不住脚的。任天堂在手游领域仍然面临重大的挑战，而《精灵宝可梦Go》几乎没能触及这些问题。在残酷的手游市场中，《精灵宝可梦Go》的成功带来的沉重期盼对这个公司来说弊大于利。

任天堂在手游领域能否取得成功仍是未知数，以下是原因：

1.任天堂的手游制作经验尚不足

众多分析人士掩饰了一个事实：任天堂并不是《精灵宝可梦Go》的真正制作者。游戏的主要的开发商是前谷歌公司Niantic Labs，且游戏内容大部分基于Niantic之前的游戏作品Ingress。（正如Kyle Orland在Ars Technica上指出的，在《精灵宝可梦Go》的九月发布会上，任天堂的宫本茂并没有对游戏做过多介绍，反而重点介绍的是Pokémon Go Plus，任天堂为游戏专门设计的穿戴设备，能够在附近出现精灵时提醒玩家。）

nintendo mobile（from gamezebo.com）

游戏的发行商也是Niantic，而Pokémon 公司（精灵宝可梦品牌授权公司）负责IP授权和游戏营销。任天堂持有Pokémon公司三分之一的股权，也是Niantic Labs的投资方，因此从某种程度上可以说在任天堂的帮助下《精灵宝可梦Go》获得了成功。然而，这和任天堂自产自销的主机游戏不同。

对于任天堂来说，理解手游产业将会是一个漫长的过程，这也是为什么该公司和日本手游公司DeNA达成了长期合作。除了作为《精灵宝可梦Go》的独立合作方外，DeNA与任天堂一同开发和运营任天堂旗下的诸多IP，包括《动物之森》和《火焰纹章》。（他们合作诞生的第一款社交应用Miitomo，一开始挺火的后来慢慢过气了。）

任天堂该如何将在一个完全不同的平台上施展他们独特的设计才能？他们该如何通过F2P商业模式让大量游戏体验变现？如何在前所未有的更大规模上运营在线游戏？这些是任天堂需要解决的问题，而和他们实际上没什么关系的《精灵宝可梦Go》并不是神奇的捷径。

2.热门手游大作不是永远的神话

让我们假设任天堂的确通过《精灵宝可梦Go》在手游领域实现了突破。如果真是如此，这家公司必须了解他们踏入的是一个竞争环境相当激烈的行业。制作一款热门作品很难，但是把它变成一项持续盈利的产业难上加难。

Rovio就是一个例子，他们完全依靠《愤怒的小鸟》建立起如今的商业，并且把宝全压在这个IP上而不去试图开发新IP。随着《愤怒的小鸟》逐渐淡出人们的视野，公司的发展也陷入巨大的困境，面临着收入下降和大量裁员。盼望已久的首次公开募股也迟迟未来临。

OMGPop是另外一个引起我们反思的例子，这家公司通过画画猜字游戏Draw Something获得了将近5000万的用户，自那以后他们发行的其它游戏再也无法达到同样的高度。Zynga在2012年投资1亿8千万美金收购了这家公司，但在2013年即宣布关闭这个工作室。

即使是曾经成绩傲人的公司也无法永远一帆风顺。King Digital Entertainment通过《糖果苏打传奇》吸金无数并进行了首次公开募股。但就在去年被动视暴雪收购时候，游戏的收入和活跃用户数量在不断下降，不过《糖果苏打传奇》还是占King总收入的40%。

那么，那些利用知名品牌大获成功的公司呢？Glu Mobile 2014年通过游戏《金卡戴珊：好莱坞》创收7400万美金。之后他们继续照搬这个模式，结果却不尽人意，而Glu的股价如今创2013年来新低。

最后让我们来看看《我的世界》，这款游戏在PC端的成功使它的手游版本受到更大的欢迎。开发商Mojang的崛起就像一个当代神话，但工作室随后陷入了创作瓶颈，除了《我的世界》之外拿不出任何其他的代表作，而《我的世界》也被微软收购了。这肯定不是任天堂希望走的路线。

3.任天堂的大多数IP都无法与宝可梦匹敌

人们也许会认为任天堂不可能陷入这些困境，毕竟它拥有如此众多热门的IP。但是如果你观察下任天堂各大IP的收入情况，或许就会改观了。与宝可梦以及马里奥相比，其它IP的表现与它们相差甚远。

在宝可梦的生命周期中，它创造了2亿1千万的销售收入，加上它的衍生产品的话就是2亿7千9百万。唯一能突破它的创收记录的只有马里奥，生命周期价值为3亿1千万，加上衍生产品价值共计 5亿2千9百万。赛亚达排名第三，但是收入仅7600万。再往下的IP就更没什么可比性了。

即使我们来看近年来的数据，宝可梦游戏在任天堂的3DS畅销榜上排名第一和第三。马里奥游戏居第二、四、五。只有《动物之森》和《任天堂明星大乱斗》能够与它们接近。

并不是说任天堂不能在手游领域取得成功。只不过与《精灵宝可梦Go》比起来，这些成功显得相形见绌，如今任天堂面临的压力是创造出同样热门的游戏以及制定自身的战略。

4.任天堂必须要决定自身的发展方向

最后这一点有点哲学化：任天堂的本质究竟在于它的设计，还是它握有的版权？

任天堂前社长及CEO岩田聪认同前者。去年在他因患癌症去世的几个月前，他对《时代周刊》的Matt Peckham说任天堂是“日本京都的手艺者”。值得注意的是任天堂这几年最大的成就——Wii Sports的商业成功，获得评论界称赞的《喷射战士》，都和他们经典的系列无关。或许任天堂的制度性创新仍然是它最大的财富。

从另一方面来看，我们有《精灵宝可梦Go》，一款与任天堂IP紧密相关的游戏。人们会设想，如果任天堂把人物授权给其它的游戏开发商，或许比开发全新的游戏更赚钱呢。这种想法也许有些牵强，考虑任天堂和DeNA的合作：任天堂的终极目标是学习如何自己制作手游，还是和更多外方合作呢？

《精灵宝可梦Go》让我们对分析人士们的期盼方向有了大概的了解，只不过它和任天堂最初的成功理念不太一致罢了。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

In the minds of some industry analysts, Pokémon Go is the start of a major transformation at Nintendo.

The game’s overnight success, they say, is just a taste of the potential rewards if Nintendo fully commits itself to making mobile games. Just imagine, they say, how well the company would do to bring other franchises like Mario and Zelda to iPhones and Android devices. Nintendo’s stock prices have soared in anticipation.

But upon closer inspection, the narrative doesn’t hold up. Nintendo still faces major challenges in mobile gaming, and Pokémon Go barely begins to address them. In this brutal business, the weight of expectation from Pokémon Go may even do more harm than good.

Here’s why Nintendo’s success in mobile is far from certain:

NINTENDO IS STILL STARVED FOR MOBILE EXPERIENCE

Here’s a fact that many analysts have glossed over: Nintendo didn’t make Pokémon Go. The primary developer is Niantic Labs, a former Google company, and the game is largely based on Niantic’s previous creation, Ingress. (As Kyle Orland at Ars Technica points out, during the Pokémon Go announcement in September, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t speak much about the game itself, and instead focused on Pokémon Go Plus, a wearable device–still unreleased–that will alert players to nearby Pokémon.)

Niantic is the game’s publisher as well, while the Pokémon Company markets and licenses the franchise. Nintendo is a one-third stakeholder in Pokémon Company, and is also an investor in Niantic Labs, so it’s fair to say that on some level, Nintendo helped bring Pokémon Go to life. Still, this situation is nothing like Nintendo’s console experience, where it serves as the main developer and sole publisher of its own franchises.

For Nintendo, understanding the mobile games business will be a lengthy process, which is why the company has enlisted DeNA, a Japanese mobile gaming firm, as a long-term collaborator. Together–in a separate effort from Pokémon Go–they’re developing and operating games based on Nintendo franchises, including Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem. (Their first creation, a social app called Miitomo, got off to a hot start and then faded away.)

Among the things Nintendo will have to figure out: how to bring its unique design talents to a completely different audience, how to sell substantial gaming experiences through free-to-play business models, and how to operate online games at a larger scale than anything it has offered before. Nintendo’s vague involvement in Pokémon Go isn’t a magic shortcut.

MOBILE MEGA-HITS ARE A VOLATILE BUSINESS

Let’s assume for a moment that Nintendo has, in fact, achieved mobile gaming enlightenment through Pokémon Go. If that’s the case, then the company must also understand the hostile environment it’s stepping into. Making a smash-hit mobile game is hard, but parlaying it into a sustainable business is even harder.

Rovio, for instance, built an entire business around Angry Birds, continually betting on its hit franchise instead of putting effort behind new ones. As Angry Birds lost its luster, the company has struggled mightily, with falling revenues and mass layoffs. A long-awaited initial public offering never came.

OMGPop is another cautionary tale, reaching 50 million users with Draw Something and never achieving the same heights with later games. Zynga bought the company for $180 million in 2012, and shut down the studio in 2013.

Even mobile gaming’s high-profile successes aren’t always surefooted. King Digital Entertainment managed to ride the Candy Crush Saga franchise to strong annual revenues and an initial public offering. But by the time Activision agreed to acquire the company last year, revenues and active users were slipping, and Candy Crush still made up 40% of gross bookings.

And what about game makers whose riches are tied to recognizable names? Just look to Glu Mobile, which generated $74 million in revenue from Kim Kardashian: Hollywood in 2014. Successive celebrity tie-ins haven’t generated the same excitement or revenues, and Glu’s share price is now the lowest it’s been since 2013.

Finally, there’s Minecraft, a game whose rousing success on PC allowed it to become an even bigger hit on mobile devices. The rise of developer Mojang seems like a modern fairly tale, but the studio struggled creatively to move beyond Minecraft, and is now just a feather in Microsoft’s cap with no other franchises under its belt. That’s hardly the outcome Nintendo wants

MOST NINTENDO FRANCHISES CAN’T TOUCH POKÉMON

One might argue that with Nintendo, the pitfalls of mobile gaming don’t apply because the company has so many popular franchises already. But a look at Nintendo’s franchise sales figures tells a different story: Compared to Pokémon and Mario, nothing else comes close.

Over its lifetime, Pokémon has enjoyed 210 million unit sales, or 279 million including spin-offs. Only Mario has done better, with 310 million lifetime game sales, or 529 million including spin-offs. Zelda, in third place, has seen far fewer sales of 76 million over its lifetime, and the list quickly tapers off after that.

Even if we only look at recent history, Pokémon represents the first and third best-selling games on Nintendo 3DS. Mario games occupy second, fourth, and fifth places. Only Animal Crossing and Smash Bros. games are near the same ballpark.

That’s not to say Nintendo can’t achieve modest success in mobile with its stable of franchises. But modest success isn’t what analysts are banking on after Pokémon Go; the company may now face pressure to produce similar hits before it’s even figured out its own strategy.

NINTENDO MUST DECIDE WHAT KIND OF COMPANY IT WANTS TO BE

This last point is more philosophical: Does the essence of Nintendo lie in its design ethos, or in its intellectual property?

Former president and CEO Satoru Iwata clearly saw Nintendo as the former–“a company of Kyoto craftsman,” he told Time’s Matt Peckham last year, just a few months before dying of cancer. It’s worth noting that some of Nintendo’s greatest achievements in recent years–the commercial success of Wii Sports, the critical acclaim of Splatoon–are unrelated to its long-running franchises. Nintendo’s institutional creativity may still be its greatest asset.

On the other hand, we have Pokémon Go, a game whose strongest link to Nintendo involves ownership of intellectual property. It’s possible to imagine a scenario where placing Nintendo-owned characters into other developers’ games proves more lucrative than creating entirely new ones. Farfetched as this may seem, consider Nintendo’s partnership with DeNA: Is the end goal for Nintendo to learn how to create games on its own, or to bring even more outside parties into the fold?

With Pokémon Go, we have a sense of which direction analysts are looking for. It just might be at odds with what made Nintendo great in the first place.（source：fastcompany）