Pokemon Company Suggests Nintendo NX Is Hybrid Device, Pledges to Make Games for It

The Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara has lent credence to the suggestion that Nintendo's NX console is a console/mobile hybrid, as it's been reported for a long, long time now.

Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Ishihara not only commented on the console but also pledged that his company will make games for it. "The NX is trying to change the concept of what it means to be a home console device or a hand-held device," he said. "We will make games for the NX."

The executive declined to confirm if The Pokemon Company's NX games would be available as launch titles when the system goes on sale in March 2017. A previous reported claimed there would be new Pokemon,Mario, and Zelda games out for the console within six months of its launch.

More recent rumors claimed the NX will use cartridges. Additionally, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime talked about how the company hopes to improve its fortunes with the NX compared to the struggling Wii U.

"One of the things that we have to do better when we launch the NX--we have to do a better job communicating the positioning for the product," he said. "We have to do a better job helping people to understand its uniqueness and what that means for the game playing experience."

As for when we may learn more about the NX, analysts told the WSJ that an official reveal could happen in early October.

Also in the WSJ interview, Ishihara talked about the wild success of Pokemon Go. He stated that the reaction to the game was "10 times or even 100 times bigger than we expected." He also commented on future features for the game, suggesting a battle mode is on the way, but maybe not soon.

"Battling is a category that we do best at Pokemon, after all," he said. "It's important to really carefully consider any feature that may increase the difficulty and raise the barrier to entry for more casual users."

Ishihara also spoke about how the publicity generated from Pokemon Go--which has been downloaded 500 million times--has helped The Pokemon Company's sales overall. He said games and trading card sales are up 30 percent to 50 percent in some cases. The uptick in sales was particularly pronounced in the United States, Ishihara said.