Yesterday, October 27, a journalist from The Wall Street Journal reported that Game Freak studio, which has been working on Pokemon games for portable consoles for a long time, bought mobile game developers – Koa Games company.
Takashi Mochizuki, a Tokyo-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal specializing in technical news, as well as Sony and Nintendo, did not report details of the deal, but gave a link to a source in Japanese.
Japanese analyst Serkan Toto said that such a move by Game Freak is most likely a purchase for the sake of frames (acquihire), and not for the sake of a library of titles. Koa Games, indeed, as a studio, was nothing interesting and was losing money.
Why did Game Freak make such a move?
The most obvious answer is that in order to have specialists at home, we are ready to develop mobile projects. Whether they will be released under the Pokemon title is unknown, but it seems very likely, since the absolute majority of Game Freak projects over the past 15 years have been created under the Pokemon license (mainly for the Game Boy and DS).
Another thing is that the official mobile game for this franchise has long been officially in development. Only The Pokemon Company and Nintendo do it directly.
However, most likely, tomorrow we will learn much more. The fact is that, according to The Wall Street Journal, tomorrow, October 29, Nintendo plans to officially present its first smartphone game, being developed jointly with DeNA.
Perhaps, as part of the announcement, the Japanese giant will also share its mobile strategy, tell you what those companies that previously made console games under its licenses will do.
Sources: gamasutra, ign, venturebeat