Irrelevant is the only thing this game wont be.

You can almost guarantee that there will be heavy interaction between pokemon go and the next mainline pokemon game of 3ds/NX

Ok, I can live with this as long as the mainlines remain on the Ninty hardware. Might even be fun.

Incidentally, do we have any idea when the next mainlines will actually launch? Presumably one more for 3DS?

2016. During the conference they showed a chart showing when each new gen started. Incidentally that chart showed 2016 with a blank. Pokemon is known for its not so subtle hints

Pokemon Go is trending on Twitter right now.

All the other ones are. Don't see this being much different.

Not trying to single you out here but I will never understand why people feel this way. Like do you all have stocks in Nintendo?? Does Nintendo's handhelds selling better really benefit you all that much?? I mean a Pokemon game on iOS/Android/Nintendo's Handheld could still be a $40 game as impressive as what an exclusive Pokemon would be. Not to mention more profits leading to higher dev budget.

Not at all, its a fair question.

Ultimately, I have immense skepticism that mainline Pokemon games in their current, high-quality form will survive more than one or two iterations on the enormously diverse iOS and Android platforms.

Hey, I could be wrong. But the problem is, if I am right, we'll only know by the time its too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

It wouldn't all be Nintendo's fault either. There is immense resistence amongst the vast majority of mobile users to pay more than $10 for a game in one hit.

hm, on one end, this could be a heavy promotion for the main series on Nintendo's handhelds ( as serebii.net reports that it links to the main games), on the other end, could be the start of the main series on the mobile platform, which I personally doubt

Yeah sadly the race to the bottom has made a significant negative impact on the mobile games market. SQEX are like the only publisher I can think of that charge more than that and they rely on cheap to make remakes and selling to a small hardcore crowd who are used to paying a lot for a game.