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Thoughts on mobile ports of older main series entries?

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Well, GameFreak seems intent on appealing to the mobile crowd, and get at least some of them to spend $400 and get a console game (see:Let's GO). We can’t change this pattern, but why not use this idea in a way that has been done before by companies like Rockstar games?

Release ports (if remasters with slight tweaks and improvements are too much to ask) of the pre-3DS Games for android and iOS? We already know that all pre-3DS games are functional on these platforms with emulation, so an official port, in my understanding, would be feasible if some emulators can do that with ROMs. It would also provide a taste for the older entries and what "conventional" Pokémon is like to the folks without the $300 investment that is a console, since the previous Pokémon mobile entries don’t do a good job at that.

These could also be connected to the present entries via Pokemon Home, and could be used to sell its subscriptions too. Not to mention providing an accessible medium for fans to play their games, since most of the genuine copies of them are used and often high in price.

What do you think? And what additions could be made to the mobile versions of these games in your opinion?

(For those who haven’t played such versions before, it basically divides the screen into two for DS functionality with virtual buttons to emulate a DS. GameFreak, of course, with their larger collection of resources, could make a feasible UI if needed)
 
The GBA games could be ported - so many people already emulate them on their phones anyway. I’m not sure if they’re a good starting point for the series, though, seeing as the mechanics of the game have been changed so much since then. The ROMs would need a lot of updating to make it feel like a modern Pokemon game, and at that point you’re just making ORAS for the GBA.

They still want to sell ORAS/Let’s Go, and for the DS games they’ve probably planned remakes for the Switch or future consoles, so I can’t see Gen 3 & 4 going mobile. I can see Red/Blue/Yellow/Crystal being released on mobile, though, seeing as they’re Virtual Console titles already.
 
The GBA games could be ported - so many people already emulate them on their phones anyway. I’m not sure if they’re a good starting point for the series, though, seeing as the mechanics of the game have been changed so much since then.
I'd say the DS games are probably new enough. Gen 4 will get remakes on the Switch but I'm not sure where would they go with HGSS and Generation 5 though, since they’re too far in the line right now for remakes.
 
i dunno how i feel about that. when i look at games like Pokemon Masters, which apparently still has issues running on devices that it should be running on (i mean, i don't think it's super intensive to run at all...), i can't say i'd be super confident on a retro port of older pokemon games on mobile. GBA games i'd expect to be able to run on a vast majority of devices, but anything past that gives me some degree of pause due to device compatibility.

like, how "powerful" would one's phone have to be to run a DS game? there's that, and the fact that despite how powerful smartphones currently are in this day and age, not everyone really owns one or wants to spend a whole lot of money on one. that's kind of getting on a tangent, but it is fairly relevant. at least with the DS/Switch it's more "either you own it or you don't" sort of thing so it's more consistent with people being able to have the ability to play x or y compared to figuring out device compatibility issues.

i'm going to say that anything older than DS games would be ok to port to mobile, but imo it gets pretty iffy past that, i think.
 
like, how "powerful" would one's phone have to be to run a DS game? there's that, and the fact that despite how powerful smartphones currently are in this day and age, not everyone really owns one or wants to spend a whole lot of money on one. that's kind of getting on a tangent, but it is fairly relevant. at least with the DS/Switch it's more "either you own it or you don't" sort of thing so it's more consistent with people being able to have the ability to play x or y compared to figuring out device compatibility issues.

iPhone 6s and above can play DS games without official intervention involved decently well. Their pitfalls come more from unofficial support more than anything else, the reason I thought the idea might work in the first place.
Smartphones from that generation and above are fairly common, and I don’t know if people who don’t buy those are the ones GameFreak expects to dump money on mobile games and consoles in the first place.

It’s 3DS and above which is impossible currently, GB(A) games have been run on stuff like Samsung Smart watches so they're fine, and DS games are possible on reasonable system requirements. Phones these days pack too much power...

Phones as old as the iPhone 4s/5 can play fully open world complex games like various GTAs with fully 3D environments with pretty much no lag on 5 year old devices so it’s not that unfeasible.
 
I would say very unlikely for generations that haven't gotten remakes yet to be ported to phones. Pokemon would much rather use DLC to milk as much money out of a game than porting an old game to a phone, just saying. I think that only the first 3 generations are the possibility of being ported to phones while Gens 4 and 5 would still receive remakes.
 
My ideal would be as follows:

- Dream World gets reopened on Mobile w/ a minor subscription (say $3 a month) to cover server costs
- Gen 1 / 2 / 3 get mobile ports
- All of the above integrates with Pokemon Home
- Gen 4 remakes are simultaneously released on Switch and Mobile. Mobile version lacks multiplayer options, but your saved game can sync between the two as long as you have a Nintendo Online account. Thus you can have something Truly mobile, a possible entry point for those who have never owned Nintendo console devices, and have a version you can throw up on your TV at will whenever you have access to the Switch.

I would love to see Pokemon get more exposure on iOS and Android and see Nintendo stop being so paranoid about having their 1st party products being available on anything other than their own hardware. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I'd love to see it.
 
My ideal would be as follows:

- Dream World gets reopened on Mobile w/ a minor subscription (say $3 a month) to cover server costs
- Gen 1 / 2 / 3 get mobile ports
- All of the above integrates with Pokemon Home
- Gen 4 remakes are simultaneously released on Switch and Mobile. Mobile version lacks multiplayer options, but your saved game can sync between the two as long as you have a Nintendo Online account. Thus you can have something Truly mobile, a possible entry point for those who have never owned Nintendo console devices, and have a version you can throw up on your TV at will whenever you have access to the Switch.

I would love to see Pokemon get more exposure on iOS and Android and see Nintendo stop being so paranoid about having their 1st party products being available on anything other than their own hardware. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I'd love to see it.
I can see where Nintendo comes from, Pokemon is their IP after all and it would hurt their 1st party system sales really badly if the main series Pokemon games get remade on mobile. Games exclusive to a console exist for a reason.
 
I can see where Nintendo comes from, Pokemon is their IP after all and it would hurt their 1st party system sales really badly if the main series Pokemon games get remade on mobile. Games exclusive to a console exist for a reason.

That would be totally valid if selling consoles was a big part of their profit. However most consoles, Nintendo (like most companies) often loses money on the sale of the console itself. You sell the console for close to its cost because you want to sell the games, which is where you make your real money. Certainly there are benefits to 1st party systems vs just being a software vendor- typically you get high attachment rates, which means you can sell many games off one system sale, rather than just having your very good titles sell. However in this particular case, do you really think there would be a sizable number of people who would say "well I Could get a Switch, but since I can play the remake of Gen 4 Pokemon on Mobile I guess I'll pass"? And do you really think that group of people would be significantly larger than the number of people who said "Well I picked up Gen 4 remake on the phone for nostalgia, but now that I'm playing Pokemon I kinda want to do some trading and stuff, and I need Pokemon Home and a Switch for that, so I guess I'll get that. I suppose there are other titles like Breath of the Wild that I'm kinda interested in anyway so I may as well pull the trigger"

I personally believe that having main series pokemon games on mobile would be a net overall positive in terms of profit, and potentially in terms of console sales as well. However I'm neither a soothsayer nor an executive at Nintendo so my beliefs don't really matter. I'm just saying, the arguments on that end could go both ways.
 
Has any major video games company ever done something like this? Pokémon has always been a pioneer for mobile content (They've done apps since 2011) so they could be the first one, but they could also be limited by Nintendo who would want to keep the games as console-exclusive.

I wouldn't download them since they would be very expensive and I don't have space for games in my phone, but I'm sure tons of people would even if the price is higher than the Virtual Console versions.
 
Dream World gets reopened on Mobile w/ a minor subscription (say $3 a month) to cover server costs
They’re already raking in enough money in subscriptions and extra content to run 10 servers simultaneously
Gen 4 remakes are simultaneously released on Switch and Mobile. Mobile version lacks multiplayer options, but your saved game can sync between the two as long as you have a Nintendo Online account. Thus you can have something Truly mobile, a possible entry point for those who have never owned Nintendo console devices, and have a version you can throw up on your TV at will whenever you have access to the Switch.
Something like Gen 4 remakes will not be able to run on mobile. There’s no way to emulate anything further than the DS on mobiles, émulation for even 3DS doesn’t exist on it.

Has any major video games company ever done something like this?
Rockstar games released ports for their games on the 10th anniversaries.
 
Something like Gen 4 remakes will not be able to run on mobile. There’s no way to emulate anything further than the DS on mobiles, émulation for even 3DS doesn’t exist on it.
This is why I said they could rework them. "The World Ends with You" and "Final Fantasy III" (the DS one) were originally DS games that got reworked to work on Android and iOS, so I could see that happening.
 
I think folks are overestimating the technical specifications of the DS and 3DS, just for what it's worth. The Wikipedia page "Nintendo DS Family" details it, I'm not linking it because I don't want to be posting external links but it's there to be found. The DS ran a 133 MHz processor with 16 MB of RAM. It had dual 256x192 pixel screens. The Samsung Galaxy S8 as an example runs an 8 core 2.3 GHz (2,300 MHz) processor, has 4GB (4000 MB) of RAM, and has 1440 x 2960 pixels to work with. It is not impossible for it to run games made for the DS, which is what Gen 4 games are. Any challenges that arise are in the emulation and/or the will to port, not in the technical capabilities of the target platform. For what it's worth, emulation Does exist for the 3DS for mobile (and for that matter, for the Wii and Gamecube besides), but I'm not going to talk about them because of the legal complications associated with such programs. Instead, I'll just reinforce - the technical side is not the problem.
 
This is why I said they could rework them. "The World Ends with You" and "Final Fantasy III" (the DS one) were originally DS games that got reworked to work on Android and iOS, so I could see that happening.
The user I quoted wanted an iOS/android version of the Switch Gen 4 remakes. DS games can be reworked, but not switch games.

—————-

I’ve personally played the Gen 4 games on a DS emulator using mobile but i won’t be discussing any further details on here. They run just fine apart from the “unofficial” issues.
 
The user I quoted wanted an iOS/android version of the Switch Gen 4 remakes. DS games can be reworked, but not switch games.
Derp, I read "games" instead of remakes. Also, on the topic of 3DS emulation, I think Citra possibly runs on Android/iOS, but I don't think it is good right now (also, X and Y are still impossible to emulate on Citra).
 
Derp, I read "games" instead of remakes. Also, on the topic of 3DS emulation, I think Citra possibly runs on Android/iOS, but I don't think it is good right now (also, X and Y are still impossible to emulate on Citra).
I’m not sure, on that, the Citra subreddit says it’s impossible currently (on iOS, atleast) and I've yet to find any way to get it on those platforms that doesn’t lead us to a malware/scam page.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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