I wonder what Nintendo will do with NFC. I'm guessing using some figures álá Skylanders.
Nah, if anything, it will just involve some kind of trading cards to unlock extras in a game, ala stuff like the eReader and the Kid Icarus: Uprising AR cards (most likely, either some kind of NFC cards for the Wii U version of the next SSB game that unlock trophies or whatever (which will also be able to be read via AR in the 3DS version of the game), similar to the KI:U AR cards, or some kind of Pokemon TCG video game that interacts with actual TCG cards). I don't see Nintendo making some kind of game that literally tries and force people to buy figures like Skylanders/Disney Infinity. It just doesn't seem to match with Nintendo's business practices and thoughts on DLC and game design and stuff to me. It could of course make Nintendo a buttload of money, but the same would be true if Nintendo were to jump fully aboard the DLC train and let people literally buy stuff like power-ups and cheats and whatever in the NSMB games and such. This seems the same kind of deal to me--it's something Nintendo could do and would probably be successful if they did, but it just doesn't seem to be a very Nintendo-like thing to do to me.
And the people suggesting a Pokemon-Skylanders game seem to be missing the real point of the Pokemon series. Of course, there's how the Pokemon series is primarily portable and thrives off direct social interaction with other people, at least in Japan, but I'm not even talking about that. The Pokemon-Skylanders idea misses the actual core of Pokemon games themselves and what makes it compelling to keep playing them, area after area, and game after game: the actual discovering and capturing of each Pokemon by the player.
Basically, imagine the first time you played a Pokemon game. Why was it so exciting to get to a new route for the first time and start running around in the grass? Because you never knew (unless you cheated and used a guide or something, which even if you did, would stem from the same excitement and curiosity) what kind of new monster you'd run into next, and when you'd see some kind of awesome thing that you just had to have. And even once you saw such a thing, the fun then comes from whittling down its health and inflicting status on it and chucking PokeBall after PokeBall until you eventually manage to capture it.
And this is true even in the spin-off games: In Colosseum and XD, you still had to snag Shadow Pokemon the same way you catch normal Pokemon in the main games. The Pokemon Ranger games have their own capture system. And even if stuff like the Mystery Dungeon games and Pokemon Rumble, you still have to defeat opposing Pokemon for a chance of them joining you. Why? Because that's satisfying and addicting. Plus, more importantly, it goes with the underlying themes of the Pokemon series of a constant sense of discovery and making new friends through effort.
The problem with Pokemon-Skylanders idea, there's would be none of that same sense of discovery on each new route or area anymore, as there wouldn't be any need for tall grass or anything, as you'd be buying your Pokemon instead of searching for them (and there'd be no way they'd actually keep the tall grass in such a game, as if they did, there would be no incentive to actually buy the figures at all). So, each area of the game would be losing part of what makes the different areas of Pokemon games truly unique and satisfying to visit: the unique assortment of Pokemon each area contains. Instead, each route would become nothing more than just another set of Pokemon battles, not much different from the previous areas, except at higher levels.
Granted, they could try and make up for that by having each area be truly visually satisfying and full of great-looking artwork and backdrops and whatever. But that's just substituting discovery for eye-candy and in the end, I don't think it would be that satisfying. To explain what I mean... say Ni no Kuni used the Skylanders idea and to get any additional familiars to actually join you, you'd have to buy figures for them. That being the only difference, the game would still look great, but it would lose the appeal of actually discovering and finding out about all the various familiars by yourself and then getting them and raising them through your own efforts, and so though the game would still be beautiful, it would have been much less compelling.
And then of course the most important thing a Pokemon-Skylanders game would be missing would be the actual act of the Pokemon-capture itself. This right here is probably at the core of how Pokemon has been and has remained so successful. Even after you find a Pokemon, you aren't just given it--you have to whittle down its health and then start throwing PokeBalls at it, which is both pretty fun and makes it feel really satisfying when you do actually manage to catch a Pokemon. A Pokemon-Skylanders game wouldn't be able to have that at all, what with Pokemon being obtained via figure and all. You wouldn't be able to get the satisfaction of acting catching a Pokemon by yourself in such a game--not in the beginning, not in the middle, or the end. It would just be buying a figure and plopping it onto the GamePad, which isn't really that satisfying at all, and combined with the sense of discovery being gone due to you no longer finding who-knows-what on each new route, would make the game feel much less compelling.
It might be fun at first, but by the end, it would pretty much be doomed to get boring compared to the current games due to not having the aspects which make Pokemon games tick: the combination of each area having new Pokemon to find and when you find them, the satisfaction of going through the process of capturing them through your own efforts. A Pokemon-Skylanders would just be pure battles, which doesn't seem as compelling by itself.
Of course, none of this is to say such a game would do terribly if it were to be made. On the contrary: were such a game to be made, it probably would be successful, because consumers probably wouldn't think about any of that before they would buy it (of course, sequels to such a game, once people realize the flaws with the idea and how most of them probably wouldn't have had as much fun with it as the main games and didn't like spending that much money on it, would be an entirely different story).
What I'm really trying to get at, is that regardless of how successful such a game would be, there's no way Nintendo would make it, because it doesn't fit with how Nintendo and Game Freak view the Pokemon IP. In a nutshell, I suppose the Pokemon games could be considered coming-of-age stories, which have children taking their first steps out into the world and discovering both the type of person they are and learning more about the world as a whole by going on an adventure where they actively discover new monsters all over the place and choose to befriend certain ones where what they learn from these new friendships ends up defining the person they are/want to become. The key word there is discovery. That is to say, Nintendo/Game Freak see the Pokemon themselves as the key to this sense of discovery and how the Pokemon protagonists, through their friendships with the ones they choose to travel with, learn about themselves and the world. That's just not the type of feeling you would be able to capture in a Pokemon-Skylanders game.
tl;dr version (since this post really is kind of long--sorry about that): In a nutshell, the problem with the Pokemon-Skylanders idea is that it would be basically treating Pokemon as things to be bought and collected and whatever and nothing more, instead of new friends who you just find and discover along a journey and decide to travel with in the Pokemon games. That is, since there's no active discovery or capturing of the Pokemon, or anything, and just buying figures instead, it just doesn't really jive with the themes of friendship or discovery or anything that Pokemon's really about, so it just seems the type of thing to me that Nintendo and Game Freak would avoid, regardless of how successful it could be and on top of that it just strays to close to the bad-kind of DLC Nintendo doesn't want to get involved with and risk devaluing their IPs or just coming off as greedy or something.
So yeah, regardless of how genius it might seem at first or how much money it could make Nintendo, I can't seem them making a Pokemon-Skylanders game at all. It might seem like a perfect fit and first and indeed Pokemon can be forced to fit that mold, but only by betraying core, running-themes of the series and I can't see Nintendo or Game Freak thinking that it's really worth it or really that great of an idea due to that kind of thing and instead feel that it just wouldn't be Pokemon anymore without the running into tall-grass and going through the effort catching Pokemon for yourself, and I wouldn't be surprised if that last bit would be pretty much exactly how someone like Junichi Masuda would reply to the idea if it were proposed to him.
