I look at it this way: What’s the point? What kind of game would work? The gaming industry nowadays has largely shifted to mobile since it’s the most profitable when it comes to how little you have to spend to make the game VS how much it gives you. That MLP G3 game came in 2008, that’s a bit before the shift to shovelware which plagues Nintendo consoles ever since, it was able to come out due to being relatively profitable at the time. Now that the costs to produce games has gone up even more so, the divide between crappy shovelware/cash grab mobile games and actual games is becoming wider and wider.
From a marketing point of view, the mobile game was perfect. It was more about collecting ponies and playing with them or something. Other than that…. ehhh….
Platforming: Might be doable? Still will have to compete against the likes of Mario and mobile games.
Fighting: Maybe for the Guardians of Harmony spinoff, but it wouldn’t fit the main series target audience and stray too far from the theme of the show.
Shooter: No.
Racing: Any sort of vehicle wouldn’t really make sense since they’re considered one themselves (Horse/pony racing).
Strategy: Very niche genre, something like Advance Wars for GoH maybe?
There’s other genres, but they pretty much all come back to the same issue: games are expensive, and FiM doesn’t have lots of opportunities for a profitable one. Guardians of Harmony, by expanding towards gender-neutrality and a slightly older audience will most definitely open more opportunities, remains to see if efforts will be made towards that, or if toys will be the only focus.
