Thoughts on 'The Dark Horse in the Metaverse Wars'
Great stuff! Had a thought about:
The question now is whether other developers can use Niantic’s tools to build a Pokémon-scale hit — or whether, as my colleague Andrew Webster has argued at The Verge, Pokémon was a fluke.
It’s possible that both of these options are false. I imagine Niantic doesn’t want to believe the success was mostly due to the IP, but Pokémon has proven to be a perfect fit for this format (tamagotchi-style, expansive) and also happened to be at a perfect point in its history for a refresher. This, plus the dearth of mainline Nintendo (ok, Game Freak) properties on mobile had people clamoring for something. In that way, it was not a fluke and may also be impossible to replicate.
I think the release of Go was a pivotal moment in the history of the Pokémon brand much more than it was or will be for any other IP they attempt to shoehorn (too strong of a word?) into their platform.