Pokémon Go has revitalised the Nintendo brand - but should we be surprised?

So, Pokémon Go is sweeping the world. Weird little creatures that ’90s parents silently wished would go away are now back with a vengeance.

I’m a bit of a Pokémon fan myself, although this new game isn’t for me personally (a time issue more than anything else). Nevertheless I’ve watched its journey closely, since 2015 when it was first properly teased to its full release in the last few weeks.

And I’m impressed. Deeply impressed. But has Nintendo really pulled the rabbit out the hat with this one?

On one hand you could argue, yes we should; after all, Nintendo has for a while looked like something of a sinking ship. It’s latest home console, the Wii U, was a critical and commercial flop, leading many of us to draw comparisons between Nintendo and fellow Japanese gaming giant Sega, which floundered in the early 2000s after the (rather unfair, in my opinion) failure of the Dreamcast console.

Plus, augmented reality (AR) forms the backbone of Pokémon Go, and if you ask me the tech hasn’t really seen much in the way of useful application.

But on the other hand, you could argue that Pokémon Go’s insane launch, the new craze it’s created, is typical of Nintendo. While the company is sometimes considered slow and behind the times by (ageist?) critics who point to the collective age of its core team, the Nintendo brand is still synonymous with innovation.

Look what the Game Boy did for handheld gaming when it launched in ’89. Look what the Wii did when it was released in the mid-00s, effectively bringing computer games to new, massive, non-gamer audiences.

In my eyes, the fact Nintendo is now turning heads with something completely new and fresh shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It was only a matter of time.

Pokémon Go is free to download and play but Nintendo is seeing the fiscal benefits of the game’s popularity. According to Sky News, the firm’s value has more than doubled since Go’s release. Incredible, commendable, but hardly surprising.

Looking head, I think Nintendo will take its success with Pokémon Go as a cue to re-evaluate its position among the games industry’s Big Three (a tech triangle that includes Microsoft with its Xbox and Sony with its Playstation). Nintendo undoubtedly understands that its real strength lies in being much more of a multifaceted risk-taker than its rivals.

The Nintendo bosses will laugh: Let Microsoft and Sony plod along with their conventional consoles, while we break ground on new territories, on new frontiers.

The rest of us will no doubt be watching eagerly, provided we aren’t too busy searching for Pokémon.

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