Nintendo’s Pokémon pandemonium is far from over, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
The video game creator that introduced Pokémon to the gaming world 20 years ago plans to release more Pokémon titles for its next gaming console, the Nintendo NX, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tsunekazu Ishihara, chief executive of the Nintendo-affiliated Pokémon Company, which licenses Pokémon branding and merchandise, told reporters on Tuesday that Pokémon GO was just the beginning of something bigger, according to the Journal.
“We will make games for the NX,” Ishihara told the Journal. “The NX is trying to change the concept of what it means to be a home console device or a hand-held device.”
That concept largely centers on bringing back chip-based cartridges, a tried-and-true data transfer method Nintendo used in its hay day, but abandoned for modern disc and web-streaming. Consoles like Sony’s Playstation 4 (SNE) and Microsoft’s XBox One (MSFT) use discs and web streaming for video game play and purchases, but a cost-lowering innovation battle between semiconductor makers Samsung and Toshiba makes cartridges cheaper for Nintendo NX, the Journal confirms.
Pokémon GO has fueled a branding resurgence for the storied Pokémon Company. Consumers around the world purchased more than 280 million Pokémon-related video game units prior to GO’s release, but Pokémon GO alone has been downloaded more than 500 million times since the app hit stores in July, according to the Pokémon Company’s site.
“I feel like the reaction we saw was 10 times or even 100 times bigger than we expected,” Ishihara told the Journal.
GO’s developer, Niantic, made its Pokémon GO Plus accessory available for download on Sept. 16. The add-on allows users to stay connected and keep playing GO via Bluetooth once the app is no longer visible on their smartphone screens.
Ishihara told the Journal a Niantic update allowing one-on-one battles between GO players is coming down the pipeline as well.
