Wizards And Pokemon Face Off Over CCG

Thanks to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for their article discussing a lawsuit filed again The Pokemon Company by Wizards Of The Coast, following Pokemon USA's taking-over of the (formerly?) lucrative WOTC-helmed Pokemon collectible card game franchise. The suit "alleges patent infringement, breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortuous interference with a business relationship, unjust enrichment and other claims", and mentions that "at least nine employees" have defected to Pokemon USA, and that "...all of the employees had signed non-disclosure agreements in which they agreed not to reveal confidential information to competitors." MSNBC has more information on this story, and while a WOTC spokesperson "expressed confidence that the issue... would be resolved", Pikachu declined to comment at this time.

Comments

Nintendo's Long History

[Yorrike]

For those of you out there not as informed on Nintendo's history as other's, and wonder why WOTC would be concerned with secrets getting to Nintendo of all people, well.

Nintendo has been making card games, trading cards and board games since 1902, and they've produced them ever since. Tading cards for the American market, Japanese market, the lot.

If you're keen on reading up about this deceptively old company, check any of these out.

WOTC should have never had the rights

[M3wThr33]

WoTC only got the rights to translate the cards from the Japanese game, which Nintendo designed themselves anyway.

But in the process, they altered the game rules, took the foils out of every pack(Inspiring more purchases), added coin flips to some attacks, lowered HP, made COUNTLESS COUNTLESS errors in EVERY set, and had a horrible league set up.

Their Pokemon League was just fine, until the Orange Island set. When that came around, they instantly retired all the old badges, giving any player that didn't start at the beginning NO chance to earn them and forcing veterans to start all over again.

This doesn't even dwell on the cost of the cards, or the fact some sets have YET to be released.

WoTC makes me sick.

Re:WOTC should have never had the rights

[Guppy06]

"And naturally Nintendo is not at fault at all for releasing Sapphire and Ruby versions, which did not allow connectivity to the previous versions,"

It's a hardware issue here, not software. The older versions were for older hardware that used older link cable protocols (including the physical layer) than the GBA now uses. If they enabled GBA link cable protocols to be backwards-compatible, I can almost guarantee you there wouldn't be multi-boot games (among other nice features) for the GBA.

Besides, forcing players to start over in a video game is lost time. Forcing players to start over in a CCG means spending $100+ trying to play catch up.

Re:WOTC should have never had the rights

[Guppy06]

"they altered the game rules, took the foils out of every pack(Inspiring more purchases)"

This right here is what has had me turned off to CCGs (and collectible minis) since I first tried M:TG. I don't like the "spend spend spend!" mentality that that makes these companies seem worse than GW in comparison. I want to collect things I have a reasonable chance of getting without having to tithe a percentage of my paycheck for several years. I feel like I'd get more satisfaction playing the lottery.

Aside from my addiction to the GameCube game, I'm loving the Animal Crossing cards because they're easy to get. The hard part isn't trying to find this character or that design, it's trying to find a store (other than Nintendo's website) that still carries series 1 cards.

Yowza...

[InfinityWpi]

Must be a slow news day on MSNBC...

WoTC attacks Nintendo with Lawsuit attack!
It doesn't seem to affect Nintendo very much!
WoTC is confused!