Last year’s Super Bowl advertising was a measuring stick of the gaming industry. The video game ads that took place during the event was exclusively mobile offerings, with the likes of Clash of Clans leading the way. It seems like it’s been years since a console (and especially a non-phone handheld)game got any love during the event. Mobile revenue is booming, with what seems like companies making money left and right.
This year, things look like they will be a bit different. Yes, we’ll still probably have mobile games pop in, but we’re getting the return of something a bit more “classic” in the gaming sense. The Pokemon Company International (partly owned by Nintendo is celebrating a huge year — its 20th anniversary — and has opted to drop in a celebratory, raise the masses advert for the sports mega-event.
But, there’s not even any real game shown.
“I can do that,” seems to be the tagline in the 1-minute video (of which a 30-second version will actually air during the Bowl) as children and adults witness each other taking command of their destinies and are pushed to do the same for themselves. Their destinies, of course, are Pokemon-based. Though never fully mentioned, they correlate to different aspects of Pokemon products we’ll see this year. We witness child playing a 3DS, a stadium with life-size combatants, and people holding phones and sharing information. We know that the original Gameboy Pokemon games are arriving on the 3DS soon, Pokken (the Pokemon fighting game) comes to Wii U in Spring, and Pokemon Go — the augmented reality game — will arrive on mobile phones at some point in 2016.
And then there’s the inevitability of a new mainline Pokemon game, and whatever may be coming to the NX.
It’s a huge year for the company, and Nintendo as a whole. Instead of focusing on specific products, the Pokemon Company wants us to focus on what it means to be a Pokemon trainer and how that experience is intended to hold true through whatever Pokemon game we play. Now we’ll have to see if the company can capitalize on it in this wildly shifting gaming landscape.
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