Nintendo wants to convince a portion of their fanbase to buy both a handheld and a home console so there will be some games on one but not the other. Of Nintendo's product line, Pokemon is the prime candidate to be handheld only.
I think if you actually run the numbers (and I'm sure Nintendo has), the broadest part of Nintendo's handheld user base is younger gamers, with their consoles skewing older, or at least in the West anyways. Hence the userbase disparity between Nintendo's efforts in both market segments and why PSP/Vita struggled to find a market that could equal Nintendo's dominance there. Heck, I imagine that there was similar demographic divides where the DS and Wii never aligned, as well.
So the actual overlap in buying both handheld and console Nintendo products likely already isn't there and this phantom notion that Nintendo can convince all but people like GAF users to buy both is probably not even on their radar, since it's such a small piece of their marketshare.
So no, exclusivity won't be done as a motivation to have consumers buy both, because that market potential hasn't existed since the 1990s.
Pokemon sells far better on handheld.
The spin-offs of Pokemon are a crap shoot regardless of the platform they're on.
If you're talking the true Pokemon RPGs? You're basically saying "faberge eggs sell better in 1st-world countries." It hasn't ever been a possibility to have a true Pokemon RPG on a console, and spin-offs are still iffy on any device, so it's a non-existent distinction you're making.
For one thing, Game Freak made the rule (and repeat it) so it's not fanboy nonsense. They just don't wanna do it.
The way it's preached as though it were woven into the design of the universe and making a console Pokemon RPG would tear the fabric of reality certainly is "fanboy nonsense". If they found a way to make it work for them, I can't imagine Game Freak would say no.
Secondly, I'm right there with you, but you gotta think about the numbers.
Full Fledged HD Pokemon is going to cost a lot more to make than handhled pokemon, It is also going to sell a lot less, by virtue of Nintendo consoles obtaining a decreasing portion of the marketshare.
When Nintendo is the one paying most of the bills on these games and not Game Freak, I can't imagine many fucks are given about that by them.
Game Freak still has yet to make a "full" 3D Pokemon, and I can't imagine them making the jump from all the way to HD development, especially when their team is only 40ish people, IIRC.
When you have a team (2 teams) that small that can consistently push out 10+ million sellers every 1-2 years putting them on projects with greater investments and smaller returns doesn't make much sense.
See, there's this team now called Nintendo SPD and another called 1UP Studio.
.... somehow I think they'll be fine. They can do a "Star Fox Zero" and get the gameplay fundamentals down while some of Game Freak and Nintendo's other teams do the rest of the heavy lifting.
And again, with Nintendo paying those bills and making the final platform calls?
You say there are gamers that would buy Pokemon for the console, but not for the handheld. You're right. But that is a nearly insignificant number these days in light of the health of Nintendo's home consoles.
Maybe console NX can get a port of the NX handheld one, but I don't expect it to because "lol GF".
EDIT: I completely forgot about Pokken. That's a good way to leverage the Pokemon IP without wasting GF's time I guess.
And yet, with the amount of people who say they'd buy it if it existed, and NX offering an option to do it without audience fragmentation? It's essentially a marketing move that could potentially pay big returns for Nintendo who, I'll say again, pays most of the bills on these projects.
Do you think that if Game Freak had the support that they needed to make a console Pokemon game, could make the game so that it interchanges with the handheld audience and thereby growing the audience instead of fragmenting it, and didn't have to pay for practically any of it that they would continue taking a hard line against the idea?
Let's get real for a second.
If the plan with NX has been a sort of software library synergy of sorts like we assume it is and all signs point to, are people so fucking stupid as to think Nintendo's first visit with their partner studios to discuss the nature of this idea wouldn't be to the one that makes them the biggest wad of money outside their own projects? Do you think they would even consider this to be something they could do with NX if they couldn't get Game Freak on board with it somehow?
It really shows me how fucking stupid people believe Nintendo to actually be, if they honestly believe that they wouldn't do that, or that Game Freak somehow has them by the balls on this matter and would never ever cave to this apparent Golden Rule of Pokemon, as written on an indestructible adamantium slab brought down from the heavens by Satoshi Tajiri.
Bingo. They need to be able to bring in a broadchurch of titles, genres and publishers. Can Nintendo snare Madden/Fifa/CoD?
Possibly, but perhaps not right away. They can snare a lot of other games people give a shit about though.
I just hope Nintendo reveal it as soon as 2016 begins. A big reveal event on january/february and from there a big gigaton of Nintendo goodness at E3 2016.
