TL; DR
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Now that the (free) Delta Gameboy Emulator is available on 1.46 billion iPhones, The Pokémon Company is incentivized to bring in its newly hired “web3 expert” and bring its classics onchain to distract from the emulation.
Full story
It’s time we update our list, titled:
“Evidence and Contributing Factors Pointing to a Web3 Pokémon Game Becoming a Thing”
(It’s a working title, don’t @ us).
👉 This is what we had until recently…
1/ Pokémon is perfectly suited for web3-based in-game economies.
You catch a Pokémon → it’s minted as an NFT → you can sell it on the open market (like a digital version of Pokémon cards) → every time something is sold, The Pokémon Company gets a cut.
The player takes the lion’s share of the profit for each individual sale, while The Pokémon Company makes its dollars through trading volume.
(Everyone wins, hugs and lives happily ever after).
2/ In March, The Pokémon Company posted a new job posting calling for a Web3 expert to advise the company’s leadership on Web3 strategy.
(Huge! But we haven’t heard anything since).
👉 Here are two new factors that could push The Pokémon Company to make this dream a reality…
3/ Atari brings its classics onchain (we wrote about it yesterday)
Atari is helping prove that gaming companies can effectively monetize their classic titles through the chain.
But why would The Pokémon Company want to make money with their games through the chain?
They have a pretty solid track record when it comes to modernizing and re-releasing their old titles on Nintendo…
4/ The (free) The Delta Gameboy emulator went live on the App Store a few months ago
That means 1.46 billion iPhone users can now play any Gameboy, GBA and/or DS version of Pokémon on their phone. free.
We can’t imagine The Pokémon Company would like this.
To combat this, they need to give gamers an experience they can’t get on an emulator…
Such as the ability to collect, trade and sell the Pokémon they collect in the game.
Is it still a bit of a utopia? Yes.
Are we going to cling to it with blind hope? Also yes.