Opinion: How Nintendo gets all the credit and none of the blame for Pokemon Go

After years of bouncing between ignoring and turning up its nose at mobile games, Nintendo broke onto the mobile gaming scene in a big way with the release of Pokemon Go in early July.

Well, they did, and they didn't.

Nintendo did not develop Pokemon Go. Niantic Labs did. Nintendo's not even the game's distributor; The Pokemon Company handles that. Yet out of all the parties who get a cut of the Pokemon Go pie, Nintendo claims the largest slice at 31.11 percent of sales on the App Store (above Apple, which gets an even 30 percent) and the same percentage of sales from the Google Play Store, second only to Google's 53.33 percent.

This has effectively made Nintendo bulletproof: they reap the rewards for Pokemon Go's success, and shoulder none of the blame for its faults.

Pokemon Go is on the verge of taking over the world. It's been the most-downloaded game on Apple's Free and Top Grossing charts since it launched, has repurposed incongruous locations from churches and museums to private residences into meeting places, surpassed Twitter on Android for most active users, passed over "porn" as Google's most-search-for keyword, and captured the attention of mainstream press outlets as easily as the greenest trainer captures a Magikarp.

Who gets all the praise for those and other accomplishments? Nintendo.

Positive buzz is icing on the cake. Pokemon Go strapped a rocket to Nintendo's stock, jumping 10 percent just 48 hours after the game's debut and 45 percent a few days later, a 52-week high. Financial experts ran some numbers and concluded that, assuming Pokemon Go holds its perch at the top of the mountain, it'll generate $1 billion in annual sales—$311 million of which goes straight into Nintendo's pocket.

The flip side of the coin is as scuzzy as the first side is bright and shiny. Pokemon Go has almost as many problems as there are officially recognized Pokemon. Server issues, permissions snafus that grant the game full access to your Google account on iOS systems (Niantic issued a statement clarifying that the app doesn't grab any info beyond your user ID and email address, and the error has since been fixed), spacey players walking into carefully orchestrated armed robberies and allegedly discovering dead bodies, and innumerable glitches.

On top of all that, the game is vacuous. You walk around, wait for a critter animated in slapdash fashion to appear, tap and swipe a few times, and that's it. There's more involved in battling trainers at gyms, but make no mistake, the bulk of your time, and the foundation of the experience, is spent shambling blindly into traffic and hunting for Pokemon.

Niantic, not Nintendo, catches the flak for the game's security holes. In the same breath, legions of players and critics praise Nintendo for revolutionizing mobile gaming. Except they didn't. They ensconced themselves in layers of plausible deniability, a bunker in which they can weather the most severe storm and emerge without a scratch and, incontrovertibly, a more posh bunker.

Compare that to the backlash over Miitomo, developed jointly by Nintendo and DeNA, earlier this spring. A social network in all but name, Miitomo garnered one million users in three days and precipitated an eight percent jump in stock. A month later, it was pulling in $280,000 a week in revenue thanks to an active user base of four million.

Therein lies the difference between Miitomo and Pokemon Go: Miitomo shed users almost as quickly as it gained them. After customizing your avatar and answering a few inane questions, there's not much to do. Pokemon Go, for all its shortcomings, has ways to keep you entertained for more than a few hours, days, even weeks depending on how frequently Niantic (not Nintendo) pushes out new mechanics to try and Pokemon to find.

Investing 101 dictates that those who spend money, make money. Nintendo has invested millions in Pokemon—from 20 million to help Niantic Labs get off the ground, to its 33 percent stake in The Pokemon Company. Now it's enjoying all the highs and none of the lows, and it's just getting started. Nintendo has posted job openings for in-house mobile developers—perhaps to work on its forthcoming Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem entries for smartphones and tablets, or perhaps other projects entirely.

However, when it comes to mobile games, maybe Nintendo should stay in its bunker and reap the rewards. The company has built a comfortable nest egg of billions and remained a powerful force in the industry by keeping their brightest minds laser-focused on developing software for proprietary hardware.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Let Niantic, DeNA, and other mobile companies assume the risk of putting out nominal video games based on Nintendo properties, while Miyamoto & Co. continue doing what they do best--all the while riding the highs of mobile gaming without getting weighed down by any of the lows.

Header image courtesy of The Verve

David Craddock

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.